DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’ve been following you since I was in middle school and now I’m 20 and working. What I wanna ask is how do detect red flags in a friend who keeps doing you dirty consistently?

Friend In Need Has A Fiend Indeed

DEAR FRIEND IN NEED HAS A FIEND INDEED: Screw red flags, FINHAFI, you need better friends.

If you’re dealing with someone who’s done you dirty, consistently and repeatedly, you’re well past the point of needing to detect red flags. That’s the point when the flags are already out, waving proudly like a military parade in Tiananmen Square.

So maybe the question you should be asking is “why do you consider this person a friend, and why haven’t you kicked them to the curb with rest of the trash?”

But let’s say, post giving this person the old heave-ho, you want to be alert to red flags in potential friends you meet in the future. There are a few things to do.

One is to pay attention to how they treat and talk about others, especially people who either have less power and privilege than them. Are they callous and dismissive? Are they rude and bullying? Aggressive and domineering? Do they behave one way to people’s faces and another entirely when they’re not around? That’s a warning sign.

Another flag to watch for is how they respond when you say “no” or present a boundary. If, for example, they have a ball-busting, roasting style of humor and you don’t, how do they respond if you tell them to knock it off or that you don’t appreciate that kind of interaction? Do they acknowledge your wishes and change how they behave with you? Do they push back and demand that you not have that boundary, insisting that “it’s just jokes” or telling you that you’re not being fun or that nobody else is bothered by it?

You should also pay attention to how trustworthy they are – the “would I trust them to watch my dog for a weekend” test. Are they someone who, through consistent behavior and actions, have shown that they’re someone you could reasonably trust with something important? Not just a secret or lending them money, but putting them in a position where they could cause harm, either through their actions or through inaction?

But let’s say that you’ve made a friend who didn’t raise any red flags, but then did something wrong towards you. How do they behave when called out on it? Do they recognize their actions, understand what the problem was, apologize and do their best to make things right? Do they adjust their behavior so that they don’t do it again? Is it something that could reasonably be a one-off or out-of-character moment, or is it that, in retrospect, you’re not that surprised they pulled some s--t? And just as importantly, do they do similar s--t more than once? A one-time mistake or f--k up is one thing; patterns of behavior are another entirely.

That’s also the point where you have to ask yourself just how many chances you’re going to give someone and why. I’m of the general belief that people deserve, if not second chances then at least the opportunity to earn them. But third chances are very, very hard to come by and fourths require significant evidence that another chance is at all warranted. If someone’s consistently f--king with you, there comes a point where you have to ask why you continue to allow them access to you and whether whatever value they bring to your life is even close to the cost of having them around.

Keep in mind: break ups aren’t just for romantic relationships. You can – and should – dump friends for toxic behavior. This isn’t the Defiant Ones, you aren’t locked together; their presence in your life is voluntary and you’re allowed to revoke their access for any reason if you so choose. If someone’s consistently “doing you dirty”, then it’s far past time to quit giving them the opportunity. Ditch the people who are making your life worse, especially if they show no interest or effort towards trying to change or improve.

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’ve been doing some soul-searching lately about my self-worth and what I can bring to a relationship, and I’m hoping your perspective on a dilemma I’ve caught myself in could help me with that.

I’m sure you’ve heard the name Paul Dolan before, but in case you haven’t, he published a study a few years back that claims that the happiest demographic is single women who never have children. His findings made the rounds in several mainstream publications, and other studies / surveys seem to back up his conclusion, at least on the surface (60% of single women are happy being single, 75% aren’t looking for a relationship, 70% of divorces initiated by women, etc. etc.).

Regardless if any of those statistics are true or not, a significant chunk of people certainly believe they’re true, and I’m afraid that there’s a chance that they could be. Even anecdotally, I’m hearing this in my immediate social circle. The girls I talk to are entirely single by choice.

Trying to put myself in their shoes, it makes sense. If I were a woman with my own place, my own money, a solid circle of family and friends, and maybe a pet or two, why would I want a man on top of that? Especially if said man is statistically most likely to make my life worse. Who in their right mind would sacrifice their time, energy, and potentially their career and independence for a liability?

With all that said, I’m left with an old insecurity I thought I already dealt with: one that says I’m not wanted, not welcome, I make women’s lives objectively worse by being in them, and if I had any moral integrity at all, I’d stay far, far away.

So now what? If women are truly better off without me, wouldn’t it be best if I left them be? And if that’s not the case, how do I demonstrate that to myself, and to the women I’m interested in dating?

Thank you for your insight. It’s always invaluable.

Warm regards,�Hopefully Blessings, not Burdens

DEAR HOPEFULLY BLESSINGS, NOT BURDENS: Hoo boy.

OK, HBNB, I’m going to preface this with the fact that what I’m about to say is not directed entirely at you. The fact of the matter is that your question is a semi-common variant of something I’ve heard from guys for decades now, and they all tend to come from the same place.

I also want to say that I’m sympathetic to you, specifically, HBNB, in as much as that this is a matter of insecurity and anxiety. But it’s worth understanding that this is as much a self-inflicted wound as much as it’s anything.

Here’s what’s up: what you’re expressing is more or less the same thing as guys who obsess about being perceived as “creepy” – an outlook of “I respect women so much that I don’t go anywhere near them”. This, in turn, is a variation of how people have chosen to handle issues regarding sexual harassment or accusations of impropriety: abdicating responsibility by avoiding interacting with women, either on a one-on-one basis or entirely. It’s very much of the same sort of attitude as various managers, bosses and certain ex-Vice Presidents: “I will avoid all chances of impropriety by simply never being alone with a woman or interacting one-on-one with a woman I’m not either married or directly related to.”

What you’re asking is, ultimately, asking for permission to be intellectually and emotionally lazy. To not question your assumptions, to not investigate or address your own internal issues and, importantly, to not change your behaviors.

Yes, I understand that this isn’t how it feels to you. From your perspective, you’re doing what you feel is the most sensible and logical conclusion; if these study say that women are happiest while single or without children, then it makes sense that your presence in their lives would be a net negative.

If that’s what the study actually says.

We’ll start with the fact that Dolan didn’t author or publish this study; he wrote a book called “Happily Ever After”, which cited a survey by the Bureau of Labor Statistics – the American Time Use Survey – which is publicly available, incidentally.

Now while that sounds like petty nitpicking for the sake of pedantic point scoring, I bring this up for three reasons.

The first is to drive home that this was a pop-sci book of the sort that you would find in airport bookstores (and that the podcasts Maintenance Phase and If Books Could Kill are fond of discussing and debunking), not a scientific study.

Second, the data that Dolan is citing didn’t come from studies about relationship health, satisfaction or longevity, but a general survey about how Americans use their time, the economic value of unpaid labor (such as housework and child care), how different factors (such as social isolation or commuting to work) affect overall health, how American adults use their leisure time and how it’s changed over the years, how much time mothers and fathers spend with their children and divisions of labor and social roles in America and compared to other countries.

Third, Dolan misused and misunderstood the data. Rather drastically in places. So much so, in fact, that at least one part of his book had to be retracted and corrected after the error had been pointed out. Dolan misunderstood that the “spouse absent” category of the data, which radically changed the tone of the information contained therein.

Dolan interpreted the data as meaning “when the woman’s spouse isn’t in the room when asked about her level of happiness, she’ll report being miserable, but will say she’s much happier when he’s there.” Hence his declaration that women would admit to being “f--king miserable” if their husbands were asked to leave the room before the survey asked about her happiness… or that the surveyor asked a second time when the wife was alone, to compare answers.

In reality, what “spouse absent” meant was that the person’s spouse no longer lived in the household. That’s a really significant f--king difference, a misunderstanding that radically changes the interpretation of the data to a point that Dolan’s position is no longer supported at all.

But just as importantly, many of the conclusions he derives from the survey is unsupported by the actual data. In some cases, such as relative levels of happiness between married or unmarried women, the data simply isn’t there; the data of the survey places the mean at approximately 4.2 out of 6 for women who never married and have no children, 4.4 for women who never married but do have children and 4.4 for married women with and without children. That doesn’t fit with this declaration that the happiest women were single without kids.

His conclusion about the health benefits of marriage for men and women is, similarly, not in alignment with this declaration that women receive no health benefits from women. What the data indicates is that there are health benefits for both men and women; it’s just that the benefits for women seem to be lower than for men. The difference is a 50% increase in early mortality for unmarried women and a 250% increase for unmarried men. Which is emphatically not the same as “married women die sooner”

To quote the sage: there are three kinds of lies – lies, damned lies, and statistics.

Now there are other surveys out there, such as one from Mintel (which is not a scientific study) that states that 61% of women in the UK are happy being single and that up to 75% hadn’t looked for a relationship. However, the same survey finds that single Britons also feel less secure financially and socially, and at least a third feel pressured to at least appear more fulfilled than they actually are.

As for why many women (in the UK, in this survey) haven’t been looking for relationships? Well, as it turns out, because not only is looking for a relationship frequently difficult and frustrating, but often women find themselves doing the lion’s share of emotional labor and housework while also working full time. They also tend to be happier being single than men, in part, because they have larger and more varied networks of friends to rely on. Men, on the other hand, have been caught in an epidemic of loneliness that’s only gotten worse since COVID.

I bring all of this up because you’ve fallen victim to confirmation bias. You started from a position of “women are better off without me” and worked from there, mistaking media hype for science (see, also: you are more likely to die from a terrorist attack than to get married after 40), taking a pop psychology book as gospel and leaping to conclusions based on the top line rather than looking at what the statistics actually said. Because these serve to confirm what you already believe, you neither questioned the data nor the conclusions but treated them as absolute proof of what you thought. It “makes sense when you think about it” because you were starting from that position and you were able to slot it into your pre-existing belief as “proof” without ever questioning the validity of it. Nor did you say “wait, what if I’m wrong”, or “what does it say, specifically?”

Just as importantly, you took “the girls I talk to are single by choice” but apparently didn’t investigate further – in part because it confirms what you believed already. But – and this is important – even if the women in your social circle are happier single than looking for a relationship, there’s a reason why the plural of anecdote isn’t “data”. Consider, for example, that people who are happier being single are more likely to hang out with other people who are happy being single, just as people who are neuroatypical tend to run in packs; they’re spending time with people who feel similarly, behave similarly or (in the cause of neuroatypical people) understand, tolerate and relate to their idiosyncrasies and choices.

I don’t say all of this to beat you down or tell you that you’re a bad person for feeling this way. I say all of this because sometimes a person needs to be shown all the ways that they’re wrong and how they’re basing their choices not on rational and clear-minded thinking and evaluation, but on their emotional states and buttressing those feelings with “evidence” that lines up with them… regardless of whether that evidence is true or not. You should be questioning all of this, including your belief that a statistically significant number of people “believe” it to be true.

Tell me: have you actually seen meaningful, reliable surveys that actually say that? Is this a case where you think you remember seeing something about it somewhere? Or did you come to this conclusion on your own?

This is another area where confirmation bias creeps in, and another time when it’s good to question your suppositions.

So I just spent a lot of time telling you that you’re starting from a place of mistaken belief and why that’s intellectually lazy. Here’s why this is a problem: because you’re taking this as a sign that you’re doomed to “make women’s lives objectively worse”. Which is equally incorrect. All of that is part of the intellectual laziness and a willingness to give up. Allow me to explain.

Let’s put the validity of Dolan’s book or the other surveys aside and say that, for the purposes of debate, that they’re more or less correct. What then?

Well, you go back to the reasons for this state of affairs and examine those. Why, precisely, are women happier if they’re single?

And the reason why a lot of women are choosing to be single or to not pursue relationships is that relationships aren’t just hard work but they’re hard work on top of the demands of the life they’re already leading. Guys who treat sex as an exercise in “I got mine, guess you don’t get yours”, who don’t take an equal share of the chores and household labor (without being instructed or needing to be taught), who don’t offload their emotional and social needs on their partner… these are all reasons why women might choose to be single.

If you don’t want to be one of the men who makes women’s lives harder and increase the amount of labor they’re expected to do… don’t be one of them. Take inventory of yourself, look at your expectations and your own behaviors and your own lifestyle. Are you capable of cooking and cleaning without needing someone else to tell you to get it done? Great – that will make you a better option as a partner because you won’t be the guy who says “well, I figured she would ask if she needed or wanted my help”. And if you take the lead on the housework instead, that’s even better.

The same goes for not turning your partner into the center of your social universe. Having your own social circle and a network of friends you can rely on for support and community in addition to your partner means that you’re not relying on her exclusively.

Emotional maturity, intelligence and greater amounts of communication – things women have been pleading for? Those are all well within your grasp. You are fully empowered to work on those now and get yourself into relationship shape.

Even being a more caring, considerate and giving lover is something you can do. But it’s important to pay attention to your partner’s actual wants and needs, rather than making it a performance that is ultimately about you. A lot of guys will turn being a better lover into “look at me I’m giving you all these orgasms, aren’t I great?” and putting pressure on their partners to go along. But being someone who can focus on connection and intimacy and pleasure without making it all about how magic your dick is, is something easily within your control.

But this takes work. It takes effort. It’s quicker and easier to say “well, it’s better for everyone if I just stay away” and be a self-imposed martyr. It’s the same sort of abdication of responsibility that the “I will avoid all impropriety by never being alone with women” types engage in – a refusal to step up and improve, to not believe the worst of men (men can’t NOT be sexed-up harassers, etc) and not accept that the lowest standards of male behavior is the best that anyone could ask for.

If you don’t want to do that work… well, ok, that’s a choice. But you have to accept that it’s a choice that you’ve made, not the most logical or beneficial thing you could do. And in making that choice, you’ve given up your right to complain about how lonely it’s made you. That wasn’t something imposed on you by being a moral person in an immoral universe, that was a decision that you consciously chose to make when you decided to step away instead.

Now here’s the last part for you to keep in mind. If you decide to make those changes and to work to be a better person, then you have to do it for yourself. You can’t do it expecting to be rewarded by others. You can’t do it and then expect women to provide you a grade in advance. It’s not something that you do and then show off like a peacock waving its plumage. You do it because it makes you a better person overall. Yes, improving your chances of partnering up is a reason to start, to motivate yourself… but the reason to keep at it is because you want to be the best man you can be, period.

Will you do it perfectly? Of course not. Nobody does, because we’re all flawed, messy f--kers, jumped up primates with brains too big for our own good and a host of anxiety disorders for flavor. But nobody expects perfection. What they expect is effort.

The point isn’t to show it off as part of your mating dance. The point is to be a better person overall and let that infuse everything you do, regardless of whether women are around or not, regardless of whether you’re single or not. You make it part of your authentic, holistic self.

So if you really want those beliefs to stop tearing at your soul, stop giving them validity in the first place. The cure for hopelessness is action. The treatment for despair is effort. Even the smallest improvement is proof that you’re neither as helpless, hopeless or powerless as you may feel.

If you want things to be better then you have to make them better. Don’t want to be a burden? OK… don’t be one. Don’t do the things that would make you an anchor on someone’s life. Make yourself the sort of person who’s got a great life with a place to live, your own money, your own circle of friends, family and loved ones, maybe even a pet or two… and the only thing that could make your life better would be to share it with someone.

Stop taking the negative nattering of your brain weasels as gospel and especially stop taking the claims that reinforce them onboard. Stop accepting those bias-confirming “facts” without question. Stop letting laziness seep in and tell you that the best thing you can do is nothing.

That’s how you avoid being the person who makes someone’s life objectively worse by trying to share it with them.

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: Long time reader here. I am struggling with a number of dating issues which I can’t find the solution to. I am 31 years old and barely had any success, due to the fact that partly it’s my fault because I either was afraid to put any effort in for fear of rejection or else a dilemma that I have been facing these past few years…. where do I go to find awesome women?

I am going to be honest I live in a Mediterranean sunny country and the social life here mostly consists of bars, rowdy parties, nightclubs and festivals. Loud people, overpriced drinks, cigarette smoke (we still smoke in clubs as if this was the 1980s), loud excessive noise etc. I am starting to get fed up of them because you can’t have a conversation in them, and it’s not fun as it was back when I was still in school. It’s not the first time my single friend (he has approached 45 and still wants to go out clubbing) calls me up for a night out and I come up with an excuse not to go and stay home to catch up with TV series. Obviously he is not going to frequent places where there are people my age and sometimes we end up going to a nightclub where the age group is 40 to 60-70 and these consist of married couples or divorced parents.

If I go out I much prefer a relaxed wine bar or else just going out for a meal or a movie. Which leaves the question … where do I go where it’s acceptable to approach women? IN nightclubs yes there will be groups of single women but approaching them in that environment is too overwhelming for me and it did not work when I was still in school either.

Sometimes I think maybe I need to say f--k it and go out and approach women in these places and who knows maybe it will lead somewhere. However I just don’t feel the thrill to do it and it’s getting frustrating knowing that I am stuck in this rut because I live in a small country and you always have to frequent the same places over and over again (which mostly involve loud music and drinks).

I have 2 groups of friends but some of them have coupled up, some kids have arrived and everyone is starting to go his own way so sometimes weekends have become a bit lonely. I seem to get on with pretty much everyone (I hope) and it’s not the first time women at work for example (2 of them are big friends of mine) call me a cuddly teddy bear.

Any help would be appreciated.

Not Going Places

DEAR NOT GOING PLACES: You’re asking a question that’s hard to answer with the information you’ve given, NGP. Not knowing where you live and thus not knowing what is around makes it difficult to say “ok, so go here”. But just as importantly, I don’t know who, precisely, you’d be looking for beyond a general outline marked “woman”.

I say this, in part, because a big part of figuring out where to go to meet women is going to be going to where the women you want to meet hang out. You aren’t a club guy or fond of loud, boisterous bars. That’s all well and good… but that also means that the women you’re most likely to be compatible with aren’t likely to be at those venues either. While people are complex and can have layers and many different interests, the likelihood of meeting someone at a nightclub who also vibes with your less-frenetic lifestyle preference is lower than it would be elsewhere.

Plus there’s the issue of how much you dislike spending time in those venues, which seeps into your interactions with these theoretical prospects and damages chances further.

So the first step would be, simply, to figure out who you’d be interested in, personality and interest-wise, and backwards engineer where she’s likely to spend her time. Ideally, someone who you’d be compatible with would also be more likely to hang out in places where you would be comfortable. Or at the very least, the places where you feel comfortable would also appeal to women who might be your type.

But just as people get too focused on getting matches on dating apps, getting focused on where women are is missing a crucial factor: are you actually going to be able to go talk to them? After all, just as matching with someone on Tinder means very little, being in the physical proximity of attractive women means little if you don’t actually do something about it.

This is why even if you were to just suck it up and go to the places that annoy or frustrate you, you may well just be signing up for a second helping of frustration because you find yourself surrounded by incredible women… but can’t bring yourself to actually make the move to talk to them.

Now here’s a third thing to consider: the abundance of people at a club is not the same thing as an abundance of people you might date. One of the things that people tend to not realize is that very few relationships start off the first meeting. We very rarely date or start relationships with people we literally just met that day; more often than not, the attraction and connection has been built over time before the first date occurs. But a lot of people tend to see it as happening that quickly: go to the club, meet a person, get number, number turns into date.

But leaving how well that does or doesn’t work, it’s not an approach that’s likely to work well for you. And that’s quite alright, because one of the most important and under-appreciated factors of attraction is what’s known as “propinquity” – the tendency of people to form relationships with people they encounter frequently. One of the reasons why it’s easy to make friends in college, for example, is due to propinquity; you have dozens to hundreds of people that you see on a daily basis, making you feel more comfortable and connected to them.

The same applies to romantic relationships; the more you encounter the same person, the greater the odds that you form a friendship or even a romance with them. That is considerably less likely to happen at a frenetic nightclub, and doubly so for someone like you, who doesn’t like to visit them.

You’d do far better to find that quiet wine bar or a chill lounge and become a regular; you’re more likely to not only find like-minded folks with a similar temperament, but who are more likely to be regulars themselves… which helps enable the propinquity effect.

The same applies to cafes or other lower-energy venues during the day – the people you see more often are the folks you’re most likely to strike up a connection with.

In both cases, these aren’t likely to be venues where you can bounce from person to person to person like a sex-seeking pinball… but that’s not the same thing as “not being able to talk to them”. These are still social spaces, where it’s generally acceptable to talk to people, including women you find attractive. They’re just spaces where the social context is about conversation, not trying to get laid. If you’re willing to date slow and give things some time so that you can get to know folks and let them have a chance to get to know you, you’re much more likely to find not just new friends, but romance as well.

Now that being said: I would recommend not immediately refusing to go to places your friend likes. You may find the occasional bar or club that you do vibe with, or that you’re more flexible in your interests than you thought. Being willing to try new things instead of dismissing them out of hand helps make you a more well-rounded person and expands your horizons. You may even surprise yourself by having a good time.

But overall? Figure out who you’re most likely to be compatible with and work outward from there. You may have to make adjustments over time as you learn more about yourself, your interests and who you are compatible with vs. who you think you might be, but it will help you find the places that are more conducive to meeting the right people 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