DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: First off, thank you for all the help! Your writing is exactly what so many people need to hear compared to the baseline internet dating advice. It has let me make immense strides with myself. I would not be having this issue without you; I would be 10 steps further back. There is always more work to do, however.

I am a Bi 20M in college who is scared to be sexual/flirt/initiate in that way with anyone. I am a virgin, and am mostly okay with this, but I will have chances to have sex thrown in my face and am almost comically unable to do anything, even though I know exactly what is on the table. Understand that this is a confusing and somewhat scary topic for me to broach. One time, someone asked me if I wanted to go to their room with them and “watch Netflix” and I stood there and said I had to play basketball with my friends. I hate basketball! I like her too! I do these things in third person it feels like, I’m just watching someone else do things I do not want. This is one of a myriad of situations I find myself in, consistently enough to be very frustrating. I was asked once to dirty talk over FaceTime (I did not understand the cues until I was essentially flat out asked). I could not do it. She would tell me just to say what was on my mind, it was completely blank. I felt completely inadequate when the call ended. Every sexual encounter I have had has been initiated by the partner.

I understand it is okay to be more restrictive with sex as a man, I don’t have to have sex with a ton of people to gain “value” or prove something, but this has become a problem. There will be mutual interest, and everything will go well, but I don’t make any moves sexually and things will fizzle out. It’s an important part of a relationship and something that I do want. I considered asexuality, but I decided that does not describe who I am.

It feels like a self-fulfilling prophecy, every failure compounds the anxiety the next time I find myself in these situations. Not having sexual experience is creating the anxiety that makes me recoil from sexual experience. What should I do about this? Read some smut and take notes? Keep at it until I get over The Fear? Find someone who understands and can take it slow? Stop making a big deal out of something that is not so (sex)? Is this intentional?

Thanks,

-Fear is my Mind Killer

DEAR FEAR IS MY MIND KILLER: Believe it or not, this isn’t all that unusual, FIMK. Just because someone wants something, even wants it more than they can possibly say, doesn’t mean that they’re going to leap at every opportunity. Despite the memes about how all men are satyrs who’re perpetually horny and would hump a tree if it was soft enough, there’s often a difference between the fantasy and the reality. It’s not that unusual to freeze at the moment that your dream’s about to come true because dreams are safe. In a fantasy, in your imagination or just thinking about what it would  be like, everything goes perfectly. It all plays out exactly the way you want and it goes smoother than Kentucky bourbon.

Reality, however is messier. When dreams become reality suddenly things have stakes! There’s every chance that you’re going to trip up somewhere! There’re consequences! What if you say something wrong or you put your hand in the wrong place or you can’t get it up or you get off too quickly? What if you sneeze or cough or fart at an inconvenient moment?

Not to mention, the sudden realization of “wait, this is about to happen??” can overwhelm you and just cause your brain to vapor lock. One moment you think that you’re a sexual dynamo waiting to happen, who’s gagging to get some and then when the opportunity unexpectedly presents itself, the only thing in your brain is a dial tone. This is actually a common response to a sudden surge of adrenaline – one that you might get when, say, someone says “so, wanna bang?” when you’re not expecting it. Yeah, your life’s not in danger, but the surprise is so intense and unexpected that your brain just goes into red alert. There’s a reason why the “fight or flight” response is more properly “fight, flight, fawn or freeze”, after all.

But those aren’t the only reasons why you – or anyone else in your shoes, for that matter – might suddenly freeze up in the moment.

The first possibility that stands out to me is that, in the examples you list, someone else is initiating. That alone could be a major reason why your brain goes “bwuuuuuh” when the chance to have sex suddenly arises (er… as it were). It may be that you’ve still got a sort of psychological whammy over the idea of who’s supposed to make the first move. Having a woman propositioning you might be so outside of the norms you were taught that you end up grinding gears trying to respond.

Another way that speed might be the problem is that the opportunity for sex is coming up before you’re ready. Again, the examples you mention don’t seem to be in the context of a relationship. You don’t give many details but it certainly sounds like these are random hook-up invitations, rather than something that’s been building over time. Some folks are more of a slow burn when it comes to sex and sexual attraction and need to build up to it. Or it could be that the relationships are progressing faster than your comfortable with and you need more time to be ready to have sex. Or it could be that it seems as though the offer of sex comes out of the clear blue sky instead of coming up in a more organic fashion. Maybe things would be different if you were on a date that lead to making out on the couch; if they were to suggest taking this to the bedroom, it might not cause your brain to lock up like someone put sugar in your gas tank.

That lack of readiness may well be coming from a place of low self-esteem, too. If you felt more like you were the sort of person who deserved love, affection and, yes, sex, you might feel more in a place where you could initiate. Or it may be that you feel like you’re going to be judged for not being able to bang out like a champion by these people who are seemingly so much more confident than you.

A third possibility is that while you may want to have sex, the people propositioning you aren’t necessarily people you want to have sex with. Again, yes, there’re all the memes of how horny guys are and the constant flood of “I don’t care, I’ll take anything” types, but if you don’t find someone attractive or aren’t attracted to them (which are two very different things), then what you may be feeling is the conflict between “want to have sex” and “…with someone else.” For all the “love the one you’re with” advice and memes out there, a lot of people are choosy about who they want to actually do the deed with.

And a fourth possibility: you may just not want sex, but you’re supposed to and so you’ve told yourself that you do. One of the things we don’t talk about often is how much culture, society and our peers affect what we do… even when it runs contrary to our actual desires. A lot of men, for example, genuinely love and lust after fat women. Not “thicc”, not “curvy” but fat. However, fatphobia is so prevalent and the fear of judgement from their peers can be so intense that they chase after the people they’re supposed to want instead, even when it doesn’t actually satisfy them. This could well be the case for you – the idea of “men are horny and should be having sex whenever possible” may have hooked into your brain and left you feeling like you’re supposed to get this done but you aren’t actually interested. And that lack of interest may be a “yet”, or a “for now”, or even an “…ever”.

It could even be that you’re being propositioned by people of  the wrong gender. You say you’re bisexual, but the examples you list that cause you to panic are all women. While bi and pansexuality does mean being attracted to more than one gender, that doesn’t mean that the attraction is split 50/50. Hell, it doesn’t even necessarily mean that the gender you fall in love with and want to have romantic relationships with is the one you’re most sexually attracted to. Is it possible that you’re bi-romantic but more sexually attracted to men? Have you had the same freeze response with other men at all?

Now, what to do about this is something of a tricky question because solving the problem – if it is indeed an actual problem – requires understanding the underlying issue. This is why my first suggestion would be to do some digging or soul searching and see if you can untangle just where the disconnect is. The more you can get into the nitty-gritty about what’s making you freeze up, the better of an idea you’ll have on how to proceed. After all, if it is a case of “right offer, wrong gender”, it doesn’t do much good to try to hook up with women when the opportunity arises. Similarly, if you’re more on the demisexual spectrum and need to warm up to sexual attraction, then random hook-ups aren’t going to help, regardless of the gender of the other person involved.

What I would suggest for now, however, is to take things slow. I think at least part of the problem is that the offers you mention are all 0-to-60-in-no-time-flat. If you didn’t feel like you needed to do all the things, right here, right now, then you might have less of an issue. Letting your sexual experience grow at a more measured pace – rounding the bases one at a time instead of trying to hit a home run at your first at-bat, as it were – you might have fewer issues. Finding a partner who’s willing to take things at a pace you feel comfortable with, one that lets you get familiar and experienced with different aspects of sex, may be precisely what you need. Instead of trying to lose your virginity all at once, taking things a step at a time may be easier for you. This way, you can build up your sense of competence and get that “well ok I have an idea of what I’m doing” so that by the time you get to, say, penetration, you’re not feeling like you need to be an instant expert.

But more than anything else, remember one thing: your first time doesn’t need to be some epic moment or  some deep, meaningful event. It doesn’t need to be perfect and special, nor do you need to make sure it’s with someone you love or want to be with for the rest of time or whatever. What you want, ultimately, is to have sex with someone who’s worth having sex with – whatever that means for 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: My mum belongs to a social group for older women who don’t get out and socialize much. The group used to meet in person prior to the pandemic but since the pandemic they meet via landline group phone call, a task that requires a phone operator in order to connect the participants. Anyway apparently the women in the group have gone absolutely crazy for the male operator, quite a few of them have even developed crushes on him. They’ve never seen the guy in real life, but his voice on the phone is apparently so sexy sounding it turns the women in the group on.

Apparently being turned on by the speaking voice of certain individuals with sexy voices is quite common among people of all genders. I’ve done some “research” (googling) and apparently straight women find men with deep voices extremely attractive, the deeper the voice the better. They apparently like men like this because it indicates a larger body size and more testosterone. Celebrities like Benedict Cumberbatch and the late Alan Rickman are examples of such “sexy voices”. Men on the other hand apparently prefer women with higher pitched “breathy” voices, since it indicates a smaller body size and higher estrogen levels. Furthermore men and women will change the pitch of their voices when flirting, women will raise the pitch of their voices to be higher and more feminine while men will lower the pitch of their voices to sound more masculine. I’m not sure if this is true or not and as the great Abraham Lincoln once said “don’t believe everything you read on the internet”. I can definitely say for myself that I’m attracted to women with feminine speaking and singing voices. My last crush had a very sweet feminine sounding voice.

I’ve started doing exercises to lower the pitch of my voice naturally without straining my vocal cords. My speaking voice is already fairly deep to begin but I want to lower it even further naturally so that it will sound extremely attractive to women. If I have the time I’m either planning to either join a choir or take vocal lessons because apparently men who sing are extremely attractive to women. I may never sound like Frank Sinatra or another handsome crooner and I don’t want to strain my vocal cords but I want to make my voice sound as attractive as possible. You’re stuck with the vocal cords you’ve had since puberty but breathing exercises can make the voice sound more masculine without putting strain on them.

How much of a role does vocal attractiveness matter in relationships? Is it worth improving my voice to woo women or am I better off focusing on something else? Or is this just a major insecurity of mine?

Sincerely

The Not So Handsome Sounding Voice

DEAR NOT SO HANDSOME SOUNDING VOICE: This one’s easy: it’s a major insecurity of your and you’re letting it run away with you.

One of the things that people don’t realize is how much they reinforce their own insecurities without meaning to. Confirmation bias – a cognitive bias where we give greater weight to things that agree with what we already believe and discount the things that disagree with them – means that we’re much more likely to listen to things that confirm our anxieties, even when the “proof” is poorly reasoned, researched or ludicrous. I mean, you were pulling stuff from random websites and not, say, Google Scholar, and it sounds like the answers you were getting were already a) poorly sourced with dubious data collection and b) dips straight into evo-psych woo.

Do some folks prefer higher voices from women and deeper ones from men? Sure. I mean, Vin Diesel’s bass rumble is impressive as s--t, Idris Elba and Keith David are both charisma factories and Alan Rickman was… well, he was Alan f--king Rickman. But other folks who’re sex symbols don’t necessarily have voices that register on the Richter scale. Chris Evans has a fairly normally pitched voice. So too does Brad Pitt. But you can also look at the number of male singers with huge female fanbases and see that not all of them sound like mountains that just started to speak. Many of them have higher pitches, some verging on falsetto. Nobody’s gonna confuse Harry Styles or Bruno Mars for, say, Barry White. And of course, there’s always Prince…

It’s also worth noting that, if you’re talking about things like, say, opera, the heroes and romantic leads are usually tenors, not baritones.

I’d also point out that a sexy voice has a lot to do with how you use it. Something as small as going up or down a register when you’re speaking can utterly change the meaning of a simple sentence. Case in point, you can watch as voice actor Erika Ishii shows just how much a change in register can affect interpretation on her Twitter feed: https://nrdlv.co/3MDAfSp

Just as importantly though: you can’t really permanently “change” your voice. The pitch and timbre of your voice is a function of the tension of the folds in your vocal chords, and once you’re through puberty, your voice is more or less set at its natural tone. You can affect the quality by, say, smoking or drinking  – the classic “whiskey and cigarettes” rasp of Tom Waits is a prime example – but that’s mostly just adding texture, not changing pitch. In terms of going higher or lower… that’s not going to happen.

(It’s also, notably, caused by damage to your vocal chords, so keep that in mind.)

What you can do, however, is learn to speak from your chest, rather than your nose or head. This puts far less strain on your vocal chords – especially at volume – than speaking with your head voice. If you say something as though you’re commanding a dog, then you’ve got an idea of what your chest voice sounds like. Learning to speak from your diaphragm rather than from your nose or head will help you speak in a tone and pitch that’s lower than what you may be used to… but it’s still just going to be your voice. It’s not going to suddenly turn you into James Earl Jones.

The thing to realize is that having a good voice is basically a value-add, not a make-or-break situation. Being able to sing is definitely a way of bringing something to the table – lord knows rock and roll has long been joked about as “the gods’ gift to ugly people”, just like at Tom Petty – but if you’re looking at it as “this is what’s going to make people fall in love with me”, then you’re going to be frustrated. It’s kinda like having six-pack abs. Leaving aside the question of who’s attracted to them, unless you’re always showing it off, which gets obnoxious very quickly, there’s going to be relatively few times that this comes into play. I mean, I guess you could make a point of hitting open mics and karaoke bars, but that seems like a lot of work for little return.

(However, if you really want to impress someone, sing Thunderball. If you can hit that last note like Tom Jones can…)

But, as is often the case, I think you’re latching onto something that doesn’t mean nearly as much as you think it does. This sounds like anxieties and insecurities talking more than anything else, and while I’m certainly not gonna talk you out of taking voice lessons, I would advise you not to expect miracles or sudden changes. If you want to take those lessons for their own sake, then hey, awesome. Learning to carry a tune is always a good thing; I can’t do it with both hands and a bucket. But they’re not going to make your insecurities go away. Focusing on your sense of self-worth and being your best, most polished self and connecting with folks instead of trying to impress them or flip evo-psych ‘attraction switches’ will go a lot further and more effectively than any ability to hop up to the mic at a karaoke night and say “Hello, I’m Johnny Cash”.

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: First off, I’ve been following you for a while and, as far as I’m concerned, nobody else on the internet can destigmatize male virginity as well as you can.

With that said, I think that the line between an incel and a sexually frustrated men is very thin, and all over the internet people use the two terms interchangeably. I also think that, even though I’m not an extreme misogynist nor do I have any desire to hurt or kill people, I still relate a lot to the incel community and their frustration with being unable to find a partner in our overly-sexualized society, where virginity is highly stigmatized, and where we are made to believe that everyone is having sex except us. I think that relating to this struggle makes me an incel automatically, and I think that finally finding someone to have sex with, even just once, would absolve me of having this “incel” identity, because I managed to achieve what none of them could and am therefore no longer “one of them.”

My other belief is that, as someone on the autism spectrum, I believe that a lot of incel traits and behaviors can be explained with an autism diagnosis. Autism would explain why these incel men are unable to make connections with people of the opposite sex and explain other things too. Autistics see things in “black and white” and they don’t have theory of mind, so that makes them believe things like “women only date tall men, and if you’re short, you’re never gonna get laid.” Autism is also the reason why a lot of these guys get it into their heads that they’re “owed” sex (because they watch movies and TV shows and assume that real life operates the same way), and why they will spaz out and behave violently if they don’t get it (because autistics have poor emotional self-control.)

For myself, I believe that being on the autism spectrum is the reason why I’m in my late 20s and never had sex or a girlfriend yet, and also why I have what most neurotypicals would consider to be a “naive” understanding of what love and sex are. Autism is really the only thing that makes me any different than the average guy, and that has to be the reason why I’m having a problem that only incels and autistic men can have. We know that Elliot Rogers was autistic, so was the van guy from Toronto, and so is Chris Chan, who some people say was the first ever incel. Even though I’m not an extreme narcissist, or a potential spree killer, I still think I have more in common with Saint Elliot than I would like to. Much like him, I also think that when I find someone to have sex with, that it’s gonna feel “heavenly” (as he puts it,) and I also find myself feeling envious of those who are in relationships, or who have had their first relationships at an earlier age than me.

I also don’t think it’s a coincidence that Chris Chan, the most bullied/ridiculed person on the internet, is on the autism spectrum. I hate that guys like him share my diagnosis, and I hate that most incels share my diagnosis. I know I dumped a lot on you, but I would like these toxic views to be disproven so that I can stop feeling s--tty about myself and change the way I see my diagnosis.

Autistic and Frustrated

DEAR AUTISTIC AND FRUSTRATED: OK, AaF, there’s a lot to unpack with this, but I think the first thing we need to do is to clarify something: there’s a difference between someone who isn’t having sex but wants to and an incel. Yes, incel is a portmanteau of “involuntarily celibate” which, theoretically covers a wide range of people across the gender and political spectrum. It’s also true that, when the term was first coined (by a queer woman, I might add…), it was as part of an online community for folks who were late bloomers who struggled to find loving and satisfying relationships.

The problem, however, is that it evolved over time; even the original community that Alana created (and had walked away from) had devolved into what we refer to when we talk about incels today. When we talk about incels and the incel community, we’re not talking about folks who have a hard time negotiating the world of love, sex and relationships. We’re talking about people who feel that they’re being excluded from something that is rightfully theirs, who blame women for their plight and whose dominant philosophy is one of anger and hopelessness. This rage comes part and parcel with some absolutely stupendous racism, sexism and, of course, the weird obsession with new forms of phrenology to explain their lack of sex. And it’s important to note: this isn’t a change in definitions that was imposed upon them by popular use; this was, quite literally, something they embraced.

The plight of incels isn’t that they can’t make connections with people, especially of their preferred sex. It’s not that they’re genetic dead ends (that’s not a thing, especially on the individual level), nor is it that they have the “wrong” brow-to-jaw ratio, the “wrong” testosterone level, or the wrong whatever. Their problem is that they’re stuffed full of anger and hate like a turduken of choleric s--t, and nobody wants to let Typhoid Gary in their personal space. Just as importantly, the incel community is a self-reinforcing, self-radicalizing and self-perpetuating bucket of crabs, where the ability to grow, change and improve is rejected, having hope for a better future is shouted down as being delusional and that the only thing that an incel can do besides “lay down and rot” is try to make other people feel their pain first.

It’s also important to note that this has nothing to do with being autistic. There’s nothing about autism that, for example, makes someone decide that “rape is infinitely less bad than NOT having sex” or that women are subhumans ruled by biology who either can’t control themselves around certain kinds of men (the mythical Chads) or are manipulative harpies who trick and cheat some men into raising cuckoos while going out and f--king all those Chads out there. Being neuroatypical doesn’t make you more prone to hate or make you more violent, nor does it mean that you’re incapable of critical thinking or that you passively accept pop-culture as reality. It doesn’t even mean you’re doomed to never have sex. As has been pointed out many a time before: autistic people have sex. Autistic people have relationships, get married, raise kids and so on. And the idea that autistic people have no emotional self-control or no theory of mind has all come from bad science and has been rather thoroughly debunked.

The examples you choose are, incidentally, not relevant. Chris-chan rather famously has and had a lot of mental health issues which had nothing to do with her being autistic, and much more to do with the perpetual and constant abuse from the chan-boards and subsidiaries who viewed her as a “LOLCow”. Elliot Rodger, on the other  hand, was never actually diagnosed as being autistic, nor for that matter does it seem that he ever even referred to himself as being autistic or on the spectrum in his rather voluminous Internet history. It seems that the evidence for his being autistic was mostly speculation and heresay that was treated as fact.

What Rodger was, however, was incredibly racist and self-loathing, as well as being a screaming misogynist. It’s telling that much of his manifesto was about how much he hated seeing AAPI men with women, especially white women because those men were “less manly” than he was… despite the fact that Rodger was half-Asian, the son of an Asian mother. He saw his having a white father as something that was supposed to elevate him over Asian and Black men; he was, in his words, a “beautiful, superior Eurasian” and wrote extensively about how outraged he was to see “ugly, lowly, inferior” Black and Asian men with white women… women who he saw as being “rightfully” his.

That had nothing to do with autism or neuroatypicality. That was racism, self-loathing and violence wrapped up in the belief that he was being denied something that was rightfully his by birth – something that’s been a long-running theme amongst violent fascists, I might add.

And honestly, placing the blame on “this overly-sexualized society” is displacement as well because hey, the problem isn’t sex. The problem is, to paraphrase the sages, “toxic masculinity ruining the party again”. It’s not exactly like one has to be Sherlock Holmes to see this; part of the central complaint of incels is that they don’t qualify as ‘men‘. They quite literally call themselves “manlets”, amongst other things, because they supposedly never get to “be” men or even boys. The complaints about not having the right jawline or the right build or being the correct height are textbook examples of toxic and restrictive ideas around who is (or isn’t) a “real man”. Even the very name – involuntarily celibate – is baked into the toxic masculinity package; after all, when your value and status is based on how much sex you’re having or how many partners you’ve had, then not having easy access to sex means you’re less of a man.

The same goes for the virginity stigma which, in this case, is entirely aimed at men. Women who haven’t had sex at a certain age are seen as unusual or odd; men who haven’t had sex by a certain age are seen as inherently defective. This is, again, part of the toxic masculinity package. If you aren’t having any sex and never have… well guess, you’re not a man, huh, Stu? It also applies to being taught that men are owed sex. That’s not something that comes from movies or television, that’s something that’s been in our culture for generations. As a 20-something, you may not have seen the sort of dating advice women used to get, but ideas like “don’t order the lobster on a date” have been around since before I was born and only started to fade in the mid to late 00s. The implication, in this case, was “if you order an expensive meal on a date, you’re going to be expected, nay obligated to put out.” So too, for that matter, was the idea that if a woman got you aroused, then she had a duty to “take responsibility” for it, that a woman who went home with you had basically given up the right to say “no” or even if she didn’t say no the right way.

If we go back to “the problem isn’t sex”, let’s dig into something that you said earlier: that you feel like you could leave this all behind if you could have sex “just once”. Leaving aside that no, everyone is not having more sex than you (in fact, sexual activity amongst Millennials and Zoomers is down, prompting as many hand-wringing op-eds about the “sex recession” as about “toxic hook up culture”), this is eminently and easily achievable. You could easily hire an escort and get that taken care of by next week. If you are worried about the legalities or the possibility of hiring someone who’s been trafficked against their will, that’s easy enough to avoid: you can go the legal route by going to the brothels in Carson City and surrounding districts. Flights to Reno are relatively cheap and easy to come by. You can fly out on a Friday, get your ashes hauled, catch your return flight that night and be back home in time to get to work the next day. Hell, many of the brothels will send a car to take you to and from the airport.

But let’s be honest: would that actually change things for you? Or would there be reasons why that ‘didn’t count’? Say, because you paid for a service instead of someone “choosing” you? Well, ok, let’s say that paying a sex worker wouldn’t count (though this would likewise imply that eating at a restaurant ‘didn’t count’ for some reason). You can – and often will – find folks at last call at bars who don’t want to go home alone. Sometimes you don’t even have to wait that long; you may, depending on the bar, find someone who’s looking to get laid for a multitude of reasons and would be happy to have a quick one. Will they be someone you’re necessarily attracted to? Possibly not. Will the sex be any good? Almost assuredly not. But technically speaking, they will have chosen you and you will have lost your virginity.

However, I am here from the future to tell you that no, this wouldn’t actually make you feel better. If anything, it’ll make you feel worse. Because when you get right down to it, what most people want when they talk about being an incel isn’t orgasms with another person, it’s that they want validation. They want to feel like they were “chosen” by the person who slept with them, that having sex says something about them and their value as men and that they had more value than the other guys. Otherwise, as I said: paying an escort for a girlfriend experience would get the job done. In fact, it would probably ensure that you had a better first time than many whose first time was a random hook-up; you would, at the very least, be with someone who had an interest in your comfort, your pleasure and overall helping you have a good experience. But again: this would mean choosing  the act of sex over what sex would represent. And what it would represent in that bar hook up… wouldn’t be any better, frankly because hey, you did it, you just had to turn your standards down to “breathing”, so hey, you can get chosen as long as you don’t mind “having to scrape the bottom of the barrel to find someone who’d be willing to touch your penis.”

There’s a reason I keep saying that women aren’t Mjolnir, man. They don’t only sleep with “the worthy”, and treating sex as a measure of your value or worth is a great way to just keep perpetuating that incel mindset you’re afraid of developing.

So now I’m going to pivot back to something I say all the time on here: the problem you’re talking about isn’t the problem you have. The issue isn’t that you’re a virgin, or even feeling envious of folks who haven’t had the dating struggles you’ve had. The issue, it seems to me, is that you’re equating being autistic as being broken. I mean, holy hopping sheep s--t dude, look at how much you run yourself down by talking about other autistic people. Insisting that autistic people have no theory of mind, that they uncritically believe whatever they see on TV or lash out in violent tantrums whenever they don’t get their way? That’s some really f--kin’ awful s--t to believe about people in general, but especially about yourself. I mean, do you, an autistic man, honestly believe that life is exactly like it is on TV? Do you have violent episodes due to poor emotional self-regulation? If you don’t… then why in pluperfect f--kery do you vomit out this kind of s--t about other autistic people?

What you need, more than to get laid, is to get the ever-loving f--k off of Reddit, 4chan and everywhere else you’re picking up this crap. Even if it’s coming from other autistic folks, that sort of self-loathing horse s--ttery only serves to drag you down and convince you that there’s something fundamentally broken in you as opposed to the fact that your brain is wired differently, you have different needs than neurotypical folks and society is very bad at addressing those needs. You would be doing a far, far bigger favor by working with a therapist to unpack and unravel these negative beliefs about your diagnosis and yourself than you would getting balls-deep in some strange.

And it’s important to break those associations because, in the one place where autism and incel beliefs are overlapping in your particular Venn diagram is the belief that progress or improvement is impossible. Incels believe that they’ve been doomed by genetics and the shallowness of women; you seem to believe that you’ve been doomed by being autistic. That isn’t true at all. You might have to work harder in some areas than a neurotypical person might, or you might have to find workarounds, support structures or other ways of addressing autism-related hardships… but even if it’s difficult, that’s still a galaxy away from impossible.

If you truly think that sex would solve this problem (it won’t), and you want to get better at finding a loving relationship, start with yourself. Loving yourself enough to stop believing the worst about yourself and to get help uprooting those beliefs can be one of the most important and meaningful steps you could take towards getting laid. Letting go of this idea that you’re somehow incapable of growing or improving and connecting with others will make it much easier for you. Yeah, dating can be a messy, complicated business. Don’t make it harder than it already can be by having to fight past your own self-loathing first.

Sometimes the most important loving relationship you can have is the one with yourself. Everything else flows from there.

Good luck.

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