DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’ve recently run into issues in growing my social circle as part of the process of becoming a better, more well-rounded person with the hopes of finding a significant other, getting married, having a family, and ultimately ending up living a life that I can feel good about living.

One of the things that’s come up in a lot of reading and interactions is to be around similar people. And it makes sense logically. But in a lot of the social things I do and activities I’m part of, the vast majority of the other single men are just kind of unpleasant. Like, at the local gaming events and fitness classes I go to, I always hang around the guys with long-term girlfriends or spouses because more of them tend to be emotionally even-keel, not throwing tantrums when they lose, mess up, or miss their goals, just good people to be around. Where the guys who are single tend to be the ones who smell bad, lack emotional control, and make misogynist comments. Basically, the people who are fun to hang out with (men and women) are the ones in committed relationships. The single men are, on average and anecdotally, kind of awful, and there aren’t single women at the places I go, likely because of the aforementioned single men.

In and of itself, I don’t mind befriending all these people who are in relationships. But on the flipside, these people spend a lot of time doing things in groups of couples or groups of families, and I never really fit in there because I’m not in a couple/my own family. I don’t fit in with the single people because, as fate would have it, they don’t take kindly to being called out on sexist behavior.

And I feel horrible for painting in such broad strokes here, but barring a few rare exceptions, most guys I’ve met who ended up being single past the age of like 25 never left me thinking “yeah, they would make a great husband.” There are just huge problems with masculinity that I alone am not capable of fixing in other people. It’s difficult enough to fix myself into the kind of person I can accept being. And as much as it’s important to deny toxic masculinity, it’s still something we have to interact with every day. Even if stigmas are bullcrap, they’re still bullcrap we have to see and face. Knowing that toxic masculinity is bullcrap doesn’t just make it disappear.

It seems like the solution in dating for me is to set up online dating, but I’m still working with my therapist on trying to get my appearance/self-image to a point where I can tolerate taking pictures of myself, let alone posting them online for others to peruse and evaluate. So that’s a work in progress, but a slow moving one.

In the meantime, though, I don’t know how I’m supposed to grow a social circle at this point. I feel like I’m mentally “settled down,” but I don’t belong with those people because I’m single and not building a family. I don’t belong with the other single men because most of them simply aren’t great to be around… and I just don’t encounter single women anywhere.

Sincerely,

Settled Down With Nothing

DEAR SETTLING DOWN WITH NOTHING: There’re a few things to consider here, SDWN, and I think a lot of it comes from the same place: binary thinking.

Call it a black-and-white mindset, call it “all-or-nothing”, but it all comes down to this belief that your choices are either this thing – whether it’s a social circle, an event or even particular people – are supposed to be exactly what you’re looking for, or they’re worthless. And while this is understandable, it’s neither helpful nor even particularly sustainable. And ultimately what ends up happening is that people end up giving up or passing on things that would actually be good for them because they’re not precisely what they think they want.

Let’s break this down a bit, shall we? First and foremost are the activities and the people you’re meeting at these activities. Now, considering the column’s theme and remit, and at the risk of making assumptions based on stereotypical behavior, I’m going to guess that you’re going to a lot of geek-heavy activities. That can lead to the issues that you’re running into; a lot of the well-adjusted and more socially conscious folks in that group aren’t going to be single because… well, because they got into relationships, in no small part because they’re well-adjusted and socially conscious. And if they were single, they likely wouldn’t be for long. So a lot of the remainder – the single guys in these groups – are going to be the ones who may not have gotten the memo just yet. Maybe some of them are just socially inexperienced, maybe they’re assholes or not the most woke…  or any combination of the above. That’s not going to be a pleasant bunch of folks to hang with.

So, I’m not surprised you’re finding that you relate better to the folks who are already coupled up. They’re much more in line with what you want and where you want your life to go. But this is where the binary thinking is coming in, and where it’s handicapping you. The fact that people are in relationships doesn’t mean that you don’t fit in with them, nor does it mean that they won’t have time to do things with you. First: people in couples can and do have single friends; the fact that you aren’t in a relationship doesn’t mean you can’t relate to them. Being part of a couple doesn’t mean that “in a relationship” is their entire identity. They’re still people, and they’re perfectly able to relate to things that aren’t about the minutia of life in relationships. Just as importantly, however, is that couples (or throuples or…) are made up of individuals. The relationship may be a gestalt entity, but they’re still discrete beings, capable of doing more than just Couple Stuff. They do, in fact, have lives outside of being in relationships.

In fact, that is actually important, both for them and for you. Having a life outside of your relationship is important for that relationship’s strength and survival. One of the mistakes people make is that they put all of their social and emotional needs into one person’s basket – their partners’. This ends up creating a lot of strain, because it means that their partner – this one person – is now the sole provider of all of their needs on top of their own. Having separate friends and separate lives takes the pressure off and broadens their base of support. Being friends with one of them or wanting to spend time with one of them actually benefits them and you. Plus, I think you’d be surprised at how much they might leap at the chance to hang with you solo. One of the issues that comes up fairly often for men in relationships is how their social circles shrink and they have fewer opportunities for “guy time” or friendships of their own. Your being friends with them would be a benefit to both you and them. So don’t write them off, just because you don’t match 100% or even 85%; there’s more to them than you’re giving them credit for.

Plus, there’s the fact that we tend to have friends who are similar to us. If you find you’re more compatible with the people who’re already in relationships, being friends with them means that you’re much more likely to meet many of their friends… and those people are likely going to be much more your speed as well. Not to mention that couples – and women in relationships in particular – often love playing matchmaker. Cultivating a friendship with them may well be the first step that leads towards your being introduced to someone awesome that they think you’d be a great match with.

However, the binary mindset goes beyond just who you’re bonding with at these social events. The mindset applies to the events too. If, for example, you’re finding that the events you’re going to are full of people you aren’t digging (in this case, because they’re assholes), then you may want to look for a different group. The odds are good that there’s more than one group or event that match your interests, and will cater to a different crowd. Part of finding your people means finding the things that will draw those people in; if the events you’re going to now aren’t it, then you may want to find ones that’re a better fit instead of despairing that this specific group is a poor fit.

And, of course, if those other groups or events don’t exist, well, then it’s time that someone made them. And since somebody’s gotta start them, it may as well be you… especially since you know the sorts of folks you’re looking to socialize with. Building your own group or events or MeetUp can take some doing, true… but by being the person to make it happen, you’re in the position to create it to your needs and specifications. You are almost certainly not the only person turned off by the less socially-adjusted dudes in those groups; providing an alternative will give a chance for them to finally find a community of their own.

This doesn’t need to be a big thing; starting small and curating the initial invites goes a long way towards establishing the tone and culture, which will help attract the people who you want to join. As the movie says: if you build it, they will come.

But let’s say, for argument’s sake, that you’re in a place where this is the only option. That’s valid; sometimes demographics work against you and there’re fewer spaces for geeky interests, especially amongst more socially aware geeks. If you’re finding that the events and groups that directly match your interests are filled with people you’d rather not associate with, you have plenty of other choices. A lot of geeky types will tend to narrow their focus to a limited range of interests and rarely deviate from them. While this isn’t bad in and of itself, it is limiting and can cut down on opportunities.

One of the things that you may want to do is branch out a little further afield and check out things that aren’t directly related to stuff you already like. The people you’re most compatible with may not be at the gaming store or in esports communities or what-have-you; they may well be in other groups or activities. Finding things that are adjacent to your interests or that have crossover with the things you already like helps broaden your horizons and lead you to being a more interesting and well-rounded person. You may even want to try things that are completely out of character for you but seem like they might be interesting. There’re a lot of activities, hobbies and interests that geeks and nerds will often cut themselves off from because “they don’t do that sort of thing” or “only X folks do that”. When you let your identity – being a nerd, in this case – become the defining characteristic about you, you run the risk of isolating yourself needlessly. By expanding what you’re willing to explore, you increase the pool of potential friends and lovers while also adding layers to you that make you that much more compelling and worth getting to know.

But – again – the binary thinking is cropping up with the guys you’re not wanting to associate with, too. Here’s the thing about I think you may be missing when it comes to issues surrounding toxic masculinity: you don’t need to solve it all by yourself, nor do you need to “fix” people on an individual level. You’re looking at this as though you think you’re supposed to take on changing these guys you’re encountering like you’re rebuilding a car or restoring pinball tables. That’s not what people are expecting of you, and it’s not even what’s needed. A lot of the reason why toxic masculine tropes stick around isn’t because someone didn’t Henry Higgins a dude into being less toxic, it’s because toxic masculinity is, in part, a societal issue. The term “toxic masculinity” refers to tropes and behaviors and beliefs about manhood and masculinity that society portrays as being good, desirable and worthy of praise and emulation. It lingers because society gives tacit approval to these behaviors and tropes. So rather than changing the individual – which isn’t your job – what you can and should do is remove the approval.

This is why the most powerful weapon in your arsenal in these cases are your words. You don’t need to be unleashing a diatribe at the guys who’re acting like overgrown children or sexist dicks. All you need is a “dude, that’s not cool.” Or, just as powerfully: “We don’t do that here.” So much of toxic s--t gets passed along because men don’t push back or call it out like this. Being the person to say “not cool” takes away the one thing that these tropes require: the idea that everyone approves of it, at least tacitly. Racists assume that everyone’s just as racist as them, sexists assume everyone’s as sexist and so on. Making it impossible for them to fall back on that belief – the social equivalent of “the lurkers support me in email” – forces them to confront the idea that they’re the exception, rather than the rule.

So while you don’t need to force yourself to suffer through other peoples’ toxic bulls--t, being willing to speak up will go a long way towards detoxifying the community. Take away the approval or the acceptance of that behavior, even if you’re just one person (at first), and the toxic element will soon realize either they have to shape up or ship out. And either one of those will help provide the environment – and community – that you’re looking for.

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: Would it be too much trouble for you to help solve an ongoing debate between me and my friends? I’m a brand-new college graduate and the “ugly” one in my friend group, just as I was in high school and will probably always be. I’m slim, fit, tallish but not too tall, I put time into my hair, skin, and makeup, I dress probably the best of all of us despite not being wealthy, I’m a super smart, funny, unique, creative person who, while introverted, is not shy or antisocial – I’m 95% sure the main problem is my face. I would like at the very least to get a rhinoplasty on my large, bony, semi-hooked nose, and double jaw surgery to shorten my extremely long chin and midface and bring the total length of my face more into harmony with its narrowness. But I’m afraid I’ll be in my late 20’s or even 30’s before I can afford it, by which point, why bother? On top of that I have thin lips, no visible cheekbones, and small, close-set brown eyes – all of which I do my best to correct with makeup, but having seen most of my friends without makeup, my best effort still falls far short of where they are naturally. My hair is long and shiny, but takes forever to grow and two different stylists have confirmed it’s too fine to bleach without risk of destroying it, so I can’t just go blonde and get an instant hotness boost like many meh-looking brunettes can.

My three best friends (the ones I’m close enough to vent to about my insecurities) are all big-blue/hazel-eyed, full-lipped, small-nosed, cute-faced girls. Two of them have amazing boyfriends, the third does not want to be in a relationship yet (although she could get one the second she changes her mind) but seems to sleep with a different hot, often older guy at least once a week. Yet they, like the rest of my friends, all complain constantly about being hit on by guys they’re not interested in, mobbed by guys at bars/clubs where they just want to drink/dance, asked out on dates by weirdos at work, guys pretending to be their friends just to creep on them, strange men coming up to them at the grocery store or gas station just to tell them they’re beautiful. Whereas I have literally never once in my life been hit on, even in places people go specifically to hook up – never been asked out – never had any guy but my dad tell me I’m pretty/beautiful – and can’t imagine I ever will.

From age 5-6 when my reasonably cute baby face started to turn weird, through 15-16 when I finally figured out how to dress and groom myself and went on Accutane, I never lacked boys calling me ugly …now, other women and sometimes gay guys compliment my outfits all the time…but otherwise I have never once had an unrelated male human being comment on my appearance in a positive way. I don’t even have any non-gay male friends (as opposed to just FOAFs) – possibly because, in my female friends’ experience, any guy who’s your friend really just wants to bang you, and nobody wants to bang me. (I will say that during the height of the pandemic, I noticed strange men *looking* at me, for the first time in my life, and even being somewhat gallant toward me, when I was wearing a mask…but none of them were apparently willing to risk chatting me up without knowing what I looked like underneath.)

A couple of nights ago I had a dream I was at a big, loud, chaotic party, the kind where you can only have a conversation by shouting directly in the other person’s ear, and caught a cute little redheaded guy staring shyly at me from across the crowded room; I did the thing where you smile and look away, and looked back to see him tentatively starting toward me, and smiled again to encourage him, and felt my whole heart and body light up and glow as I looked flirtily away again, absolutely knowing he was making his way across the room toward me. I woke up well before he got to me, and immediately started crying because it’s the exact kind of thing I long for, that would never, ever happen to me in real life. I know how to give the look…I just don’t get the response.

I do get occasional Tinder matches, but those guys never message me, and if I message them (which I really need to stop doing), they either don’t reply, or make it clear they’re not really interested. So I can only conclude that these are the guys who blindly swipe right on every girl, then when we match they actually look at me, and decide I’m not good enough. I’m still a virgin because it seems my only option would be to get super drunk and just throw myself at the grossest guys in the bar until one of them decides I’m worth a pity fuck, and somehow I still have too much self-respect for that.

When I ask my friends if they’d want to trade places with me, they accuse me of being antifeminist and not having empathy for their problems, while refusing to have empathy for mine. It’s getting to be a self-fulfilling prophecy where I’m less and less able to make the right supportive noises when they complain about all these creeps and weirdos, because I can’t help thinking how awesome it would be to have a constant parade of guys approaching *me*, and be able to pick which ones I wanted to sleep with/date – or if the one I wanted was too shy to join the parade, to at least be assured he’d probably be thrilled if I approached him. Rather than always bearing the burden of having to do the approaching, and getting my emotions and self-esteem trampled in the dirt again and again and again. It’s not that I fail to see the downside or am unwilling to ever listen to them vent, I just wish they would sometimes stop and count their blessings

(Note: I promise I am not chasing guys out of my league. I realize my friends’ boyfriends would not be a match for me, and I would not feel secure with a guy way better-looking than myself anyway. I actually prefer “adorkable” intellectual guys over classically handsome gym/frat/business bro types. But it sometimes seems like all men are fixated on the same type of conventionally cute/beautiful woman, and if they can’t get someone like that, would rather be alone and bitter than get to know someone like me. In fact the guy I had the most demoralizing crush of my life on is still whining online about being a virgin at 25, which he attributes mainly to being short, which I don’t care about and never have – it’s just that he feels entitled to an Instagram model. So the last thing I want here is to come off as a female version of him.)

Sometimes they try to turn this around and tell me to count *my* blessings, because at least I get to live my life free from sexual harassment. Nope! I get catcalled almost every time I go running alone, I was groped and had my bra unhooked by middle-school bullies (some of the same ones who called me a beast, a butterface, and made barfing sounds when I walked by), and when I was walking back to campus from downtown alone one night my freshman year, before I made any friends to go out with, I was chased by a man who probably intended to rape me, only I managed to hide beneath a parked car. I thought it had been pretty conclusively proven that that kind of s--t is based on power and desire to intimidate, and has little to nothing to do with beauty or attraction. I see it as a completely different category of behavior from sincere compliments or guys (no matter how gross/ugly/creepy) approaching you in ways that indicate actual desire (no matter how unrealistic) for a date/consensual sex. The way I see it, attractive women get both (A) catcalled/harassed/assaulted/raped and (B) spontaneously hit on/asked out; unattractive ones get (A), but generally not (B). And while this may look like the unattractive ones getting less s--t overall, it can also end up being a huge loss – not only because it reinforces the fact of your unattractiveness and undesirability, but because while the guys doing (A) are uniformly pieces of s--t, sometimes one of the guys doing (B) will turn out to be someone worth going out with, who gives you a fun experience and maybe even gets to value you for more than just your looks. Whereas if you didn’t have the looks, he would never have spoken to you in the first place. (This is how both my best friends’ relationships started, a fact they seem to have wiped from their minds.)

Having said ALL that, all I’m really looking for here is an expert acknowledgment that my prettier friends are indeed privileged over me, rather than us simply having different but equivalent privileges/disprivileges. And, I guess, any hope you can realistically offer for the future. As I edit this for the hundredth time, after I first started writing it on a drunk and lonely night of spring break while all my friends were hooking up, I’m just a few days from moving away to start my dream job in my dream city, where I deeply hope but still find myself doubting things will be different for me. Am I totally off-base in thinking cosmetic surgery might improve my life, especially if I can find a way to get it done while I’m still fairly young? Or should I give up thoughts of having wild romances with several different guys while young, and focus my efforts on finding just one weird dork who cares more about bodies than faces to settle down and have weird dorky kids with, even if we’re both 25+ year old virgins by the time we find each other? How would I go about that, and if I succeeded, how would I keep from feeling forever dissatisfied with my sexual past and not appreciating the life that I had?

Thanks,

Facing My Future

DEAR FACING MY FUTURE: So… this is a lot, FMF, and I think it goes a lot deeper than the question you’re asking. There’s a whole host of issues buried in this and they’re all tangled around each other like horny snakes. But I’m nothing if not game for untangling weird wiggly knots, so let’s start with your initial question about cosmetic surgery and such and work outwards from there.

To start with: yes, beauty privilege is a thing. I don’t think anyone seriously disagrees with that. However, the idea of beauty and what it means isn’t black or white; it’s one great tangled mess that women with actual doctorates and decades of study have worked on. So they’re going to be a much better resource for that than a male loudmouth with an advice column.

I’m generally neutral about cosmetic surgery. I don’t think it’s inherently good or bad, nor do I think it’s something to be shamed for or to be viewed with disdain. I mean, bodies are in part vehicles for the brain to drive around, so if you want to trick that sucker out with some aftermarket mods, by all means, go for it. If you want to touch up the bits and bobs that start to drift and change as time and gravity make fools of us all, then hey, cool! If it was good enough for Dwayne Johnson or Marilyn Monroe, it’s good enough for other folks, if they’ve got the money, the ability to take the time to recover and heal and – importantly – they’re willing to face the not-insignificant risks that come with major surgery. And I don’t mean the nightmare stories about recovery from Brazilian butt-lift surgery or whatever, I mean the basic risks of anesthesia, infection and the other myriad risks that come from going under the knife.

However, it’s important to recognize that cosmetic surgery, no matter how minor or extensive, only addresses the exterior. In fact, it doesn’t matter if someone goes in for cosmetic surgery or changes their through willpower and discipline; internal problems can’t be fixed by exterior changes, even when someone is absolutely sure that their problems are strictly external. You will still be you when the bandages come off. Even if your transformation were purely through your own hard work… it’s still you who did the work and it’s still you on the other end of that journey. Your exterior may look different, but the brain driving it around is exactly the same.

This is a lesson that a lot of incels learned the hard way after spending new-car-levels of money on cosmetic procedures; after all that money, all that time and in some cases crippling amounts of pain, their problems didn’t magically go away. In fact, in many cases, it got worse, precisely because they “fixed” the supposed deficiencies they were suffering under and yet they still had the incel mentality they went in with.

So in your case specifically, FMF, I’d say no, I don’t think cosmetic surgery is going to help you, in no small part because this is an internal issue more than an external one. I think focusing on the external to the exclusion of everything else – and it certainly sounds like that’s what you’re asking about – will just make things worse for you. I mean, let’s game this out for a second. Let’s say you go in for those procedures and they work exactly as you hope they do: you get the precise face you wanted with no worries about side-effects, post-surgical complications or any other negative outcome. I think there will be a very, very small window in which you will be happy. And then will come the point where you realize that the folks who are giving you attention are the same people who supposedly ignored and disdained you and refused to see how wonderful and awesome you are. Are you honestly going to be able to live with the knowledge that the people giving you this attention are that shallow? To know that you had to break your face into pieces and reassemble it just to get them to consider you as a romantic possibility?

That’s not an idle question; that’s something that people face, all the time when they’ve made external changes without first addressing the internal problems. And, spoiler alert: it doesn’t go well. Those incels I mentioned that got surgical procedures done to “fix” themselves? They got even more pissy because it just “proved” that the “femoids” are shallow and beneath contempt and all the rest of the garbage they spew.

If I’m being honest, I feel that way about your desire for a series of wild relationships while you’re young, at least based on what you’ve written here. In general, I’m pro hooking up and pro casual sex. I’m of the opinion that sex is great, romance is great and folks who want more of either (or both) should go for it without shame. However, I think that some of what you’re looking for right now – the hook ups, and wild romances with different guys  – aren’t coming from a good place. It’s one thing if someone, regardless of gender, is coming to that from a place of “I like sex, I like newness and novelty, I don’t like long-term relationships”. It’s another when they’re coming to it from a place of having something to prove and wanting those wild experiences in order to get validation or to “prove” something to… someone. Themselves, if nothing else.

This is, likewise, not idle speculation or my being down on hook-ups. A recent study by Billie E. McKeen, Ryan C. Anderson, and David A. Mitchell in Sexuality and Culture found that hooking up in order to manage negative emotions – alleviating bitterness, anger or loneliness, for example – were reliably predictive of negative outcomes: that is, you end up feeling worse about yourself in the long term. Speaking from personal experience, that tracks. When I was deep in PUA culture at the start of my journey, I spent a lot of time sleeping with folks because I was trying to prove something about me and it didn’t go well. At all. I had much better experiences when I’d found my own sense of worth and my sense of confidence and wasn’t relying on external validation.

I’m sure this wasn’t exactly what you were hoping to hear. At the same time however, I’m not here to jump all over your dreams; I want to help you get to the place where you could go for these things… if you still want them at that point. You might, you might not, it’s cool either way. But to do so, you need to address the inside before you work on the outside.

There’re a few things that leapt out at me in your letter that I think are important to dig into. First: it doesn’t sound like you and your friends don’t have the greatest or most mutually supportive relationship. To be fair, it’s understandable that you’re focusing on the downsides right now; you’re dealing with a lot of understandable frustration and misery. But when you describe them talking about the s--t they experience, you don’t sound terribly sympathetic to the fact that yeah, it’s not fun to have people bother you when you’re just trying to be out with your friends. You even have your own experiences about how “any” attention isn’t automatically good attention. The guys who catcall you or the one who chased you – and fucking hell, I’m so sorry you experienced that – aren’t that far off from the guys who’re spontaneously hitting on your friends. Just because someone’s hitting on you or flirting with you doesn’t automatically mean that it’s wanted attention, or even that the person doing it is interested in you, so much as what you represent to them.

I can promise you – having been one of the guys doing approaches at bars and clubs – that many time, the thought process is seeing them as a number, not a person. It’s not “Hey that person looks like she’s got a lot going on, I bet she’d be fascinating to get to know”, it’s “there’s an 8, if I can land them not only do I get one lay closer to my goal but my bros will be SO FUCKING JEALOUS”. Or even “I want to get laid, I want to prove I’m a stud and I deserve a hot girl and I’m gonna get my rocks off and if she doesn’t… oh well, not like I’m gonna see her again afterwards.”

And incidentally, can also tell you, having been hit on at times when I didn’t to be, it ain’t comfortable to experience. At all.

However, that lack of support seems to go both ways. You don’t say whether your friends are supportive of you. Do they hype you up and point out how awesome you are when you’re down? Do they point out the things they like about you or that they think make you attractive? Do they offer to help or provide reassurance or emotional support? This is no small thing; having people who are on Team You, who are ready to let you know how incredible a person you are is important. Far more important, I might add, then being told you’re beautiful by someone who’ll say whatever they think it’ll take to get into your pants.

If they aren’t helping you out, hyping you up and telling you that you’re awesome and that you look great (not “despite…” anything) then that alone may be an issue. Doubly so if they’re just doing the negging thing by telling you “oh you’re so lucky you don’t deal with this.”

So right off the bat, I think either you and your friends need to work towards mutual empathy and support… or you need better friends.

(More on this in a second.)

The next thing I notice is how your examples of beauty are very… well, white. The things you bring up as cornerstones of someone’s attractiveness (or your supposed unattractiveness) are almost entirely northern European features: blonde hair, blue or hazel eyes, small noses, Cupid’s bow lips, cheekbones, dainty chins. That’s not insignificant, because we tend to forget that beauty is cultural and we as a society keep denigrating people who don’t have white features as being less attractive. And even when mores change – witness the recent shift from skinny builds to curvy ones, particularly with rounded buttocks a la Kim Kardashian – it’s still very much in taking bits and pieces from BIPOC women and saying “OK this part is good”, while disregarding everything else.

So I think it may be worth examining what standards you’re using you measure beauty and attractiveness and just where it comes from. Not because you need to be more woke or whatever, but so you can recognize just how much culture and body standards that are literally marketed to you influence how you see yourself.

I mean, if we take your general description, you know who I see in my head? Michelle Gomez – most famous in the US for playing Missy on Doctor Who and Mary Wardwell on The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. While it’s true she doesn’t have the wide-eyed gamine look of certain supermodels, that doesn’t mean that she’s ugly or unattractive by any stretch of the imagination. We can talk about how much her looks play into the roles she gets cast in, but that’s a cultural issue, rather than a comment on her looks.

(And, again, to get personal: Dr. Mrs. The NerdLove points out that when she was in grade school and middle school, she was called “Broomhilda” for her profile. That, as she puts it, never held her back when she started dating.)

Taking some time and finding folks who have similar facial features to yours that you think are attractive could be useful to you. The more you can recognize that the standards you’re using to beat yourself with are arbitrary and that there’re people who look like you who you think are cool, pretty, hot, whatever descriptor you care for, will go a long way towards helping you believe in your own attractiveness.

The third and final issue I noticed is this: “I don’t even have any non-gay male friends (as opposed to just FOAFs) – possibly because, in my female friends’ experience, any guy who’s your friend really just wants to bang you, and nobody wants to bang me.” This in and of itself is… a lot. To start with, it really seems like this is a choice you’ve made; you don’t seem to be interested in or have tried to build friendships with straight guys. That’s an issue on a couple of levels, not the least of which being that having some guy friends might give you perspective and a little more insight into what men are like when they let their guard down.

However, it also seems to illustrate something I noticed through your letter: you are really focused on spontaneous, out of the blue attraction and attention, rather than something that builds over time. In fact, it seems like you’re kind of dismissive of the idea that anything other than a stranger being willing to come talk to you means… well, anything good. But honestly, the vast majority of people don’t meet their partners that way. I can understand why you focus on this; if someone’s motivated to come talk to you, it must mean you’re so desirable that they had to act or regret it forever. However – and again, I can tell you from experience – much of the time, you aren’t a person to them as much as a potential lay. Personhood may come along too… but not always.

Just as importantly though, one of the things that folks often forget is that, we don’t date or start relationships with people we just met as a general rule. And studies have found that while there’s a consensus of who is or isn’t attractive upon first glance, that consensus vanishes when we get to know someone, and uniqueness becomes far more important as a gauge of attractiveness. However, first one has to let folks get to know you. And, preferably, not just as a friend-of-a-friend. Attraction that’s spontaneous tends to be very shallow and short-lived; attraction that lasts is built over time, because it’s more than just looks. It’s personality, it’s shared interests and experiences, mutually held values, humor and so on. You know, the things that you need time to discover and to create together. Focusing solely on “comes screaming out of the clear blue sky” encounters means you’ve cut yourself off from the way most folks meet their partners and build attraction and relationships.

Now this doesn’t mean that you need to start becoming a Nice Girl and trying to work The Friend Zone, don’t get me wrong. What it does mean is that maybe you need to give folks time to actually get to know you and build something together, instead of assuming that they need to want you from the jump for this to be real, valid and meaningful.

I also wonder if you haven’t let your friends cut you off from this, intentionally or otherwise. The whole “guys who say they’re your friends just want to bang you” buys into the sort of toxic bulls--t I’m always warning men against. First and foremost, it treats the idea that sex and friendship are mutually incompatible or that you can’t be friends with someone you want to fuck. That’s bulls--t in and of itself. But also, it implies that guys can’t be friends with women which is also bulls--t. Yes, there’re Nice GuysTM who will try to collect enough Friend Tokens to upgrade to sex, and there’re assholes who’ll say whatever they need to in order to get laid. But that doesn’t mean that there’re aren’t guys who aren’t genuinely interested in being your friend. And as I said… I think you may need better friends.

Having more friends – good, supportive friends – is important for overall happiness and emotional uplift. But if you’re treating guys who are approaching you for anything other than dates with suspicion or mistrust, or even just ignoring or deprioritizing them in general, you’re cutting yourself off from a lot. Not the least of which is developing the skills to turn a casual acquaintance into something more.

So what do you do about all of this? Well, to start with, I think you need to let go of the idea that you can only have these sorts of adventures or experiences when you’re young. The idea that you have some sort of deadline by which you need to get all your wild crazy experiences in by is, in a word, horse s--t. Horse s--t from a herd of cholera-infected horses. You can have crazy wild romances, adventures and absurdly sexy times at any age, and many times it’s better when you’re older. After all, by the time you’re in your 30s, you still have much of the energy and drive of your 20s, but backed by greater experience and greater resources. Hell, I know folks who hit their fifties and sixties and started to live lives that would make Hugh Hefner bite through his pipe stem, and they’re having the time of their lives. So you have more time than you think… or at least you will if you stop fetishizing youth to the point that anything after 25 may as well be death.

Next, get better friends and be a better friend. If things aren’t as dire as they sound in your letter, then great, I’m thrilled to be wrong. But as it is, it sounds like neither you or your BFFs are terribly supportive or empathetic to one another and that desperately needs to change. I don’t know if it’s something you all can build together or if this is a “scrap it and start over” situation, but you need Team You to back you up and remind you that you’re a certified hottie in and of your own right.

But by the same token, you need to be your own biggest fan and best advocate for your own gorgeousness. Letting go of the very narrow strictures of beauty that you seem to use as your yardstick will go a long way towards this, as will finding examples of beautiful and attractive women who don’t look like they were stamped out of a factory in Denmark. Finding more women who look like you, with similar features and hair and realizing that beauty comes in MANY forms is going to be vital. If you don’t believe in your own attractiveness, why should anyone else? All that happens then is someone tells you that they think you’re hot and you end up calling them a liar, directly or indirectly. Like I tell guys all the time: dress in ways that make you feel like a sexy bad-ass, regardless of what other people say. Do the things that make you say “goddamn, I am a nuclear-powered demon goddess” when you look in the mirror. Letting yourself believe is the first step to accepting that other people can and do feel that way too.

Likewise: don’t focus so much on spontaneous, out-of-the-blue approaches as the ne plus ultra of attraction. Sometimes, you need to let things build like a smouldering fire to get what you want.

And look: none of this is easy, and nobody gets through life without a little help. You’re clearly carrying around a lot of pain. Talking to a counselor may help you unpack some of this and help you get to the places I mention.

But at the end of the day: you have more than you realize, you’re stronger than you think and people value you in ways that you don’t see yet. You’ve got more going on than I think you give yourself credit for. You just need to get yourself to a place where you can accept it. Sometimes it takes longer than you’d prefer to get to that happy ending… but that doesn’t mean you won’t ever get there, or that it will be somehow less important, valid or meaningful when you do. But you can’t get there if you’ve convinced yourself that it only counts within this very narrow window of time and even narrower view of what’s “real”.

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’m hoping you can help me out. I’m 38, a self-professed geek, and sadly, very single. I seem to be having a problem involving meeting women, that I can’t seem to overcome. I also seem to have another problem in relating to them, once I’m involved with them.

First issue: I was recently talking with some of my fellow geeks, bemoaning the sorry state of my love life, and how I never seem to meet anyone who’d be interested in me, when they dropped a bombshell on me.

As it turns out, according to them, I’ve actually missed several opportunities to get to know women better, simply by dint of not recognizing that they were flirting with me. 

Now, I didn’t recall any times when someone was flirting with me, but my friends insists they’ve seen this happen several times – and have also seen me be completely oblivious to it.

Now, I was willing to blow this off as my friends just messing with me – until I happened to mention the conversation to my mother – and she voiced the same concerns! Having your own mother notice something like this is uncomfortable, to say the least. 

I’ve tried reading articles about how to tell if women are interested in you, but they don’t seem to do me any good. I just don’t seem to recognize any of the cues I’m supposed to see, when I do actually talk with women, which is admittedly, not very often. I am a geek, after all. It doesn’t help that I have ADHD, but I know that can’t be the entire reason for my problem.

Second issue: this involves a kind of long story, so please bear with me.

I was involved with a woman a couple of years ago. We met, got to know each other, and things progressed into a physical relationship pretty quickly.

We agreed, at the start, that neither one of us was looking for a serious romantic relationship. I was still smarting from a break-up a while before, and she had just gotten divorced. So we both stated that we were just looking for someone to have some fun with – “friends with benefits”, as they say.

Well, for a while, that’s exactly how things were between us. We’d get together, hang out, talk, and have fun. Just as often as not, we’d end up in bed together.

However, after about 6 months, things seemed to change. First, she unexpectedly bought me gifts. Then, she started wanting to go out with me more often.

This seemed a little strange to me, given the nature of our agreement, but I went along with it.

However, after a few months, I started losing contact with her. I stopped calling her, and she stopped calling me. Eventually, she moved away to another state. 

I recently spoke to her online, and happened to mention how odd it was that things between us seemed to just come to a halt, and that’s when she told me something I apparently didn’t see for myself – that her feelings had changed, and she wanted things to be more serious and permanent between us. 

She also stated that the reasons she left me were twofold: One, that it didn’t seem to her that I wanted things to be any more serious than when they started; and two, that she couldn’t truly tell how I felt about her. When I told her that I had genuinely cared about her, she was honestly surprised.

A few days after this online conversation, I mentioned it to a couple of friends of mine, one of whom is female, and she told me that the reason my FWB left me was the same reason my last girlfriend before her left – she just wasn’t sure how I felt.

So, my question is: for each of these problems, what would your recommendation be? I don’t seem to be having any luck improving things on my own, and thought a fresh insight could be useful.

Hopefully, I haven’t bored you to tears with this letter.

Thanks for your time.

Blind Guy

DEAR BLIND GUY: Yeah, you don’t have two problems, BG. You’ve got one. Both of the issues you wrote about are the exact same issue.

But let’s take this one step at a time.

It can difficult to tell when someone is flirting with you, especially if you’re not used to it. In fact, most people are, quite frankly, pretty bad at it. Especially when both men and women tend to be taught to communicate in different, often-conflicting ways.

A lot of women are taught not to be overt in showing interest to guys, while others may not realize that what she considers to be an obvious sign of interest can be incredibly subtle to guys. It’s a classic “same planet, different worlds” sort of miscommunication.

I’ve written before about how to tell if she likes you – and a lot of flirting depends on people’s individual personalities –but I’ll reiterate a few significant signs of interest and flirting:

Proximity – If she’s hovering around for no good reason; if the bar’s not crowded but she keeps brushing past you to get drinks or hanging around your table anyway, for example, or if she just happens to be nearby every time you turn around.

Eye Games – the classic look, look away, look back and smile is a frequent come-hither signal, while the triangle gaze — eye to lips, to eye again is often a sign that someone is at least thinking of kissing or being kissed.

Touching – Casual physical contact while she’s talking to you, especially if she touches you while she laughs. Where she touches you is also an indication of how interested she is; the hand or face is more intimate than the arm, for example. If she touches you on the leg with her foot, it’s also a sign that she’s flirting.

Teasing – If she’s giving you s--t but with a smile – especially if she touches you when she does – she’s probably flirting.

Preening — little gestures like playing with their hair, adjusting clothing and the like are often about either drawing attention to a feature or trying to present themselves as best as possible

Laughing — If she’s laughing way harder than your jokes deserve or making a point that she thinks you’re funny, she’s often conveying interest.

Now, it’s worth noting: any individual signal is often useless; one person’s flirting signal is another person’s fidgety habit. You frequently need context for what any one person’s signals would be. The more you talk to someone, the better a grasp you get for what is a signal and what’s just them being them.

If you learn to keep your eyes open for these, you’ll start calibrating your social Spider-Sense. It may do you some good to do some gentle flirting first as a way of pinging for interest. How she responds will give you an idea of whether she’s interested and you should keep flirting, or she’s not and you’re better off to dial things back. You’ll inevitably hit some false positives, especially while you’re learning, but better to give it a chance, than to keep missing out on the girls that like you.

But while we’re talking about missing the subtle signs that a woman likes you, you’re also missing the glaringly obvious signs that she likes you. Such as in the case of your friend with benefits.

Now, I realize that it’s a cliche that guys are taught to be more “logical” and direct while women are more subtle and intuitive but Sweet Zombie Jeebus my dude, you took this to an unnatural extreme.

The problem here, BG, is that you seem to believe that the agreement you had with your FWB was a binding contract.

It wasn’t. One of the first rules of a friends-with-benefits situation is that the arrangement between the two of you is subject to renegotiation at any time. Which is exactly what your friend was trying to do.

This, my friend, is why she was suddenly bringing you unexpected gifts and wanting to hang out more often… she was trying to show you that she was thinking of you as more than a friend and occasional bouncy-fun-time companion. She wanted you to know that she wanted to spend more time with you and to show you that she thinks about you. Just as guys often afraid of being too obvious and risking being shot down, she didn’t necessarily want to risk outright rejection by asking you straight-out.

Especially since she wasn’t entirely sure how YOU felt, seeing as things had fallen apart between you two.

And judging from her complaint (and those of many others) that she could never tell how you felt, it’s not terribly surprising that she decided to pull up stakes and move on.

Here’s a hint: responding with a bemused “That was weird…” was not the response she was looking for.

As I’ve said before, most friends-with-benefits relationships end one of two ways: either you end the benefits or you quit being friends. She wanted to quit being friends… and be MORE than friends. Once she’d reached that point, continuing to screw around with a guy who liked her but didn’t like her like her was just going to be painful. Nobody likes to think they’re nothing but a sex toy to the one they love.

But hey, you say you cared for her deeply… but did you ever show her that you did? Did you ever tell her?

From the sounds of things: no. No you did not. For that matter, it sounds like you never told your last girlfriend either.

The answer, BG, is obvious. You need to learn to be more demonstrative of how you feel instead of assuming that women are mind-readers. You may feel that you’re showing how you feel already. Clearly you aren’t, since this is a recurring problem for you. Start learning how to be more expressive with the people you love and you’ll have fewer issues of getting dumped because they aren’t sure how you feel. And the easiest way to do this? Use your words.

As you’ve seen, what seems like a glaringly obvious sign of interest or affection to YOU (or them) can seem like a “well, clearly they think we’re just friends” to other folks. Skipping the subtext or even saying the subtext out loud (‘this means I’m interested in you and I want a relationship with you’) may be the difference between a new partner and missing a golden opportunity.

Good luck.

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