DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’m dating this girl, yeah its not really a get the girl story, so I’m not sure you might have some advice for this, but I’m pretty hopeful cause its actually been pretty stressful.

Now, back on the subject, my girl, when we’d been dating 2 months, started talking to her ex about how she wanted badly to be with him, and to give a little bit of backstory to this ass, he was her boyfriend from the time she was 14 to 17. He went out with other women while they were going out, telling her that his family was making him and that it meant nothing. He got another woman pregnant right after they broke up, a month or 2 after she found out for sure she was, she broke up with him. So, something about this guy that she hasn’t thought about most likely got a pregnant woman to prefer to raise this child by herself and balance college she’s now going to along with it…

Anyway! more to the point, since then I’ve just been having tons of times where I wonder if she really wants to be with me. In her defense, ever since she talked about it with him, she’s been trying hard to make it up to me, and I know this is probably something you can’t really give quality advice for, but I’ve been hearing good things about your advice so, I’m wondering what advice you can give on this, break up with her, make rules, etc? I’m not really sure what the thing to do is for getting completely past this…

Second Choice, Last Place

DEAR SECOND CHOICE, LAST PLACE: This is one of those times when I wish you’d given more information, SCLP, especially your respective ages. I’d love to know, for example, how old you and your girlfriend are, how long an interval it had been between when she broke up with her ex and when she started dating you.

This is one of those times when age and distance from the previous relationship are very, very relevant. Especially since the two of you sound so very young.

Now I realize that I am offically An Old, and I would prefer not to think of how long it’s been since my high-school days. But one thing I remember very well is just how intense and chaotic and confusing everything was and how very important everything would be.

On the one hand, I kinda envy that level of certainty and self-assurance that everything mattered, that every relationship would be A Love To Last The Ages and the ability to feel everything so very intensely.

On the other hand, I also remember how that meant that everything was a constant stream of drama that meant that everything was more important than everything else that had just preceded it. And while those highs were very, very high, those lows were abyssal, and there was very rarely ever any rest between the two. And let me tell you with the voice of experience: the roller coaster ride is only exciting because it’s brief. When everything is a constant interplay of highest highs and lowest lows with nothing in between, it becomes exhausting. And worse, without the moments of calm – the time between the last drop and the next climb to the ride – it goes from being exhilarating to nightmarish.

So I say this with the full acknowledgement that my advice is going to have a harder time landing in the face of the surge of hormones, the chaos of trying to figure out who you are, and the emotional hurricane of trying to navigate adult-ish relationships without the experience and perspective that comes with age: chill, my dude.

Here’s the thing: your respective ages and the length of time it’s been since your girlfriend broke up are going to be incredibly relevant and intertwined with each other like horny snakes.

Let’s start with that teenage chaos aspect. This is a two-fold issue. First is, like I said: you’re at a period of radical transition in your life, and that’s going to be pretty significant. The physical changes that kicked off with puberty mixed with being expected to behave like mature adults, despite having little life experience with which to gauge things, trying to create your own identity separate from your parents’ and figure out your place in the world – amongst your peers and family, at your school and in your immediate future – mean that everything is louder than everything else. The inherent drama of being a teenager is exciting, even when it’s stressful, and that excitement feels a lot like the thrill of New Relationship Energy. Especially when it’s your first relationship, and the only basis you have for comparison are what the stories you’ve read, songs you listen to and movies you’ve seen tell you to expect. 

(Incidentally, the whole “our brains aren’t fully developed until 25” bit that keeps going around is wildly misunderstood and doesn’t say what folks think it says. It doesn’t mean that people under 25 can’t make decisions; it just means the prefrontal cortex lights up differently at different ages. Everything beyond that is speculation, not proven fact.)

Then there’s the fact that she was dating him for three to four years. When you’re 17, that’s a quarter of your life. When someone’s been part of your daily existence for a full fourth of your time as a conscious being, they’re going to be an important part of it, and not having them around is going to feel like a much bigger loss than it would if everyone had started dating in their mid-20s.

So that mix of chaos and the sudden absence is going to blend to create a sense of “this was the most important thing in my life”, and it’s understandable that the pang of missing it will be pretty intense, in and of itself.

But then there’s question of how long its been since they broke up before you and she started dating. One thing that has been fairly consistent amongst teenagers since the concept of adolescence became a thing is that they tend to bounce between relationships very quickly. And this can create some weird emotional cross-talk because as it turns out, jumping straight into a new relationship can mean that you haven’t exactly dealt with how you feel about your previous one. Nostalgia is a hell of a drug, even when you’re a teenager, and it covers up a lot of sins. When you look back at a relationship – even one that’s only been over for a few months – it’s easy for the golden haze of the early days to overwhelm the bad memories. The conflicts, the cheating, the way you and your ex treated each other and so on seem less significant and less important than how it was when things were good.

So while hearing about how she misses her s--thead ex – even while he’s actively being a s--thead – can definitely hurt, I don’t think you need to take it as a sign that she’d rather be with him. I think she’s still processing everything that happened, with all those attendant highs and lows, and it’s very easy to let everything get jumbled in one’s head.

(Let he or she who hasn’t had the impulse to get back with a s--tty ex cast the first stone, y’know?)

That having been said… I would suggest that maybe the two of you shouldn’t be dating seriously right now, especially if this is a recent break up. Giving her some time to process her feelings, come to terms with the break up and realize what she actually wants will be valuable for her. Meanwhile, you get time to try to decide what you would want – including if you want to continue pursuing this relationship – without feeling like it’s all or nothing. If you enjoy each other’s company and the connection you have, seeing each other is just fine. But if the two of you don’t take time to figure out what you want – and don’t want – then what you’re going to get are more moments of emotional lows, electric shocks of pain from hearing that maybe her feelings are more complicated than she realized and the overall insecurity of never knowing where you stand.

At the very least keeping things more casual takes away the pressure of exclusivity and an all-or-nothing relationship. You have the opportunity to decide if you’d rather wait until she knows what she wants, if you want to try to ride things out as is, or if you should be seeing other people while she’s trying to sort out her own life.

Now one thing I will suggest is that you two talk things out while you decide what you’re doing next. You don’t want lay down rules or read her the riot act; that’s going to be counterproductive. What you do want is to have an Awkward Conversation, where you lay out how you feel and want to know how she honestly feels, rather than a knee-jerk “no, wait, I meant you, I really prefer you”.

It may mean that this relationship may have to be put on hold for a bit. While that’s going to sting – a lot – that pain will be far less than if you were to continue things while she’s legitimately conflicted. Putting things on pause for now while she figures out what she wants and how she feels means that it’s much easier for the two of you to come back to things, rather than having to work past the pain of a break up mixed with the feeling of being rejected for someone who’s treated her badly.

So the lesser pain now can help you avoid a much greater one in the future… and to create a stronger foundation for your relationship in the process.

But no future is going to happen until the two of you sit and actually talk to each other. So start there.

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 am not a good looking person by any stretch of the imagination, at least not in the conventional sense of beauty. The thing is, when I’m using dating sites like OKCupid of Plenty of Fish, I can easily find girls I’m attracted to, both by their pics and their self-description. I will also be contacted by girls who are attracted to me, but whom I don’t find attractive in return. How do I remedy my own physical attractions (as physical as you can get online) to girls who aren’t interested and girls who are interested? 

Also, this doesn’t just have to deal with girls on the web. I’ve had a similar problem with girls in the real world as well.

Man In The Mirror

DEAR MAN IN THE MIRROR: There’re a couple things to consider, MITM. First and foremost is that being good at online dating, especially in the post-Tinder era, is a separate skill from actually dating.

As swipe mechanics create an incentive of shallow, superficial browsing, knowing how to make yourself stand out and capture people’s attention as they’re idly thumbing through Tinder is a skill, and one a lot of folks never fully cultivate.

It can seem a bit odd to separate it out like that, but making connections on dating apps, especially ones with swipe mechanics, is very much a multi-disciplinary skill that goes beyond just “be attractive; don’t be unattractive”. Looking good in photos, for example, isn’t about being blessed with the right cheekbones and a certain level of facial symmetry; it’s about knowing framing, understanding lighting and make-up, how to pose and present yourself to the camera and how to create a connection between you and the person looking at the final results. 

There’s a reason why there’re literally thousands of conventionally attractive people who never work as models; they may have appealing facial features, but they don’t have the other skills that come together to make themselves leap out of that photo.

And that’s before we get into the differences between how men and women use dating apps.

So the fact that some of the people you’re into aren’t matching with you doesn’t mean that you’re not attractive. Clearly you are, seeing as you’re getting attention from other women. It’s more likely some aspect of your profile isn’t clicking with them or catching their eye in the right way or there’s some aspect of your profile that signals an incompatibility. Gauging your objective attractiveness by how people respond on dating apps is like trying to decide who’s the most delicious by who gets taken down by a leopard first; that’s just not how things work.

Now some of this can be an in-person issue too. You don’t say if you’re actually approaching the women you find attractive, or if you’re looking for spontaneous attention from them before you talk to them. Similarly, you don’t say if these women you’re not into are approaching you unprompted, or if you’re just catching signals from them that you’re not seeing from the other women. It’d be helpful if you’d included that information, since that could tell us more about just what the problem could be, or if there even is a problem.

But one thing I can tell you is that it sounds like you’re hoping for quick or even instant attraction, which… well, that’s not exactly how things work. Yeah, we can tell at a glance if we find somebody sexy, but as a general rule, we don’t date based on love at first sight. More often than not, we date people we’ve gotten to know over time; propinquity has far more to do with who we choose to date than “seeing that sexy somebody looking at us from across the bar”.

And no, dating apps don’t disprove this; there’re reasons why most first dates off dating apps tend to never lead to anything. There are so many factors that affect who we are or aren’t into that can’t be detected over text or even video chats; we only can truly experience them in person. First dates off the apps are often more about figuring out whether there’s actual compatibility and enough we find the other person interesting enough to spend more time getting to know them.

So one of the things I would suggest is to worry less about trying to get instant results – like getting a phone number or date from someone you just met – and more about getting to know people over time. Exposure and familiarity will do much more for building attraction and interest as people get a chance to know you and vice versa. If nothing else, it’s much easier to improve your love life when you get comfortable talking with the women you find attractive without being overwhelmed by the feeling that her looks give her status over you. Being able to connect with people as people is incredibly attractive. If you aren’t flustered by talking to Hottie McHotterson and feel like you need to be Perfect Tommy to get a date, then you’ll do a hell of a lot better. Plus, getting to know her without the self-imposed pressure to Get The Date will mean that you can spend time finding out whether she is worth your time and if she has more going for her than just being good looking

And incidentally, I’d suggest applying that same outlook – getting to know folks beyond how tight your pants get when you first see them – with the women who seem to be showing interest in you. Not because you need to “settle” or date women who’re more your speed, but because you might be surprised by them if you got to know them.

Plus: you’d be amazed at just how that “enh, not bad” woman at the gym or the bookstore turns into wolf-whistle-jaw-drop-lip-bite when she’s gotten dolled up to go out.

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 a very average guy when it comes to dating, I feel. I go out on dates with girls once in a awhile. I don’t have any issues with asking girls out, but at the same time I’m not a “player”. The question is :

What do I do if I’m insecure about my girl’s career? Is there something to make it easier to get over?

I’ve been dating this girl for a while. I met her in a bar in downtown San Diego. She was working there as a go-go dancer. Her lifestyle of constant bars and clubs, along with getting hit on by celebrities in LA makes me insecure. In the past, she has been in shows on HBO and was a model for a long time in a TERRIBLE show called “Manswers” on Spike TV. I don’t stop her from doing anything, And I never pay for anything.

But her lifestyle, and the fact that she makes more money then me makes me insecure.

Kicking Outside My Coverage

DEAR KICKING OUTSIDE MY COVERAGE: So, there’s a reason why I pulled your question specifically, KOMC, and that’s because of how universal this actually is.

See, it’s really easy to get caught up on the flashy details of your situation: a girlfriend whose career depends on being physically attractive and desirable, who’s income is dependent on creating an illusion of being available but unobtainable, and has “high status men” – for suitably individual values of “high” as well as definitions of “status” clamoring to try to get into her pants.

But honestly, while the details are sexy and all, the problem that you’re dealing with is actually remarkably common. The problem isn’t that she’s a gogo dancer or that she’s got celebrities hitting on her. The problem is that you’re worried that you’re not good enough for her and that you can’t contend with the hordes of other men who might be competing for her time and attention.

In fact, you see a lot of this discourse these days in a lot of Manosphere circles and related social media accounts – men proclaiming how they’d never “let” their girlfriend start an OnlyFans or how women who “show off their bodies on Instagram” are less trustworthy because... reasons. 

Now if we’re being honest, much of this discourse happens because the loudest voices are very open about wanting to control their girlfriends or wives, making them less “partners” and more “property”. But another part of it comes because of how many people see dating as a competition. This undercurrent comes up all the time when we hear from men who worry that the women they want to date are “out of their league” or that they can’t outperform “players”. They worry that they don’t have the coolest car, the best or sexiest job, the biggest paycheck or the “Six Sixes” and thus can never trust that their relationship is secure.

Mix this with classic toxic and restrictive ideas about gender roles – like men having to earn more than their partners – and you’ve created a situation where someone can never feel secure in their relationship. There’s always that fear that “someone wants to take my stuff”, and worse, your “stuff” may want to be taken.

And that’s what we have here. Take away the sexy details and this is a common, even mundane problem. It’s ultimately down to the fear that dating is less about mutual attraction, respect, shared interests and values and compatibility, and more about who’s got the most points on the spreadsheet.

But that’s not how people date. While there’re always going to be individuals who are that mercenary and status-seeking in their relationships, they’re so few and far between that worrying about them is like worrying about being eaten by a great white shark… when you live in Iowa.

But hey, maybe that’s a thing to worry about for you. Johnny Theoretical may be in the Mojave, but you and your sweetie are swimming around The Great Barrier Reef… and your girlfriend’s been dousing herself in steak sauce. So how is an average non-celebrity supposed to date an incredible woman when there’re so many other people who also want her? Men who can flash fat stacks and flashy rides, wave their clout around and turn her head with all those demonstrations of higher value?

Well here’s my first question: if your girlfriend was that shallow and that easily drawn away, wouldn’t that mean that she shouldn’t be with you in the first place? Well, obviously not. It’s not as though you met her when she was a simple, naive young thing from the country, stepping off the bus and into The Big Bad City for the first time. She was a a gogo dancer and fixture in the nightlife scene when you met her. She was already living a life that brought her into contact with the rich and famous, with folks trying to woo her with their connections, cash and clout. And yet she’s with you. Has been all this time, too.

Yeah, the Usual Suspects can make noises about “betabux” or weird cuckoo logic (literal cuckoo logic, at that) about banging celebrities behind your back while dating you, but none of that actually makes a lick of damn sense when you think about it for half a second. If her whole thing would be banging all these “better” men… why would she be doing so while dating you? Clearly it would be better for her to actually be single and maximize her opportunities. Nor would it make much sense for her to be buying you things with the money she’s earning in these flashy, sexy jobs, if you’re just the “beta” who’s ultimately providing support for the lifestyle to which she intends to be come accustomed.

I think you have to take a deep breath and look at how she’s actually behaving. Unless you left some significant details out of your letter, it sounds like this is much more about the potential that some celebrity will finally break down her defenses and sweep her off her feet than an actual worry. If she’s been with you, a non-celebrity, for all this time (and again, in a career that she’s had from before you met her) and stayed with you as she’s had TV gigs, modeling jobs and other occasions to mix and mingle amongst the glamorous… well maybe she’s with you because she likes you for who you are. She didn’t start dating you because you’re the New Hotness on the Hollywood scene, she started dating you because you’re you and she likes you, specifically. 

Plus, I can guarantee you that she finds a lot of the celebrities to be obnoxious. I’ve got friends who’ve been in similar situations – friends who dated folks who you would’ve heard of – who’ve said the same thing: 9 times out of 10, the celebrities who’re hitting on the dancers or models tend to be tedious at best, or their behavior and attitudes render them utterly unfuckable.

So I think what you need, to help get over this hump, is to focus on that. She started dating you because of who you are and how you make her feel. Trusting her and trusting that connection will do much more for easing your anxiety and realizing that hey, she’s fully capable of recognizing that she’s got a good thing going here.

Now as for the money issue… look, it’s hard to undo a literal lifetime of social programming that gets so deeply embedded in male psyches that some men get erectile dysfunction when their partners outearn them. But while your disparity in income may mean that you can’t split the bills 50/50, you can contribute in other ways. Even if it means saving up so you can splurge on her on occasion, finding different ways to provide in the relationship and actually valuing those contributions will help immensely. Your bank accounts may have similar balances, but you can make sure that the balance of your participation in your shared life makes up the difference.

And honestly? That’s going to mean a lot more to her than anything with a price tag on it.

Good luck.

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