DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’m 32 at the end of July and I’ve never even kissed, still got the v-card. Had social anxiety my whole life so far (Asperger’s Syndrome side effect) and it has made it nearly impossible to get a job. So-called “zoomers” talk as if I’m middle-aged already. I’ve been trying to fix myself this whole time, been on medication, therapy, exercise. I still don’t like myself very much.

Are women out of my reach?

I read your article about how not to be creepy but if I could just decide to be charming or worth talking to I wouldn’t be so anxious around people.

It feels hopeless. What do I do?

Logan’s Runner-Up

DEAR LOGAN’S RUNNER-UP: Here’s a suggestion: quit listening to Zoomers online, especially about anything related to being “too old” for something.

Ok, granted, as a man who’s just stepped into the far side of his mid-40s, that’s a little “get off my lawn”. I freely admit that. However I keep seeing people who have literally convinced themselves that life functionally ends at 25 because… well, because. Mostly because they keep hearing Zoomers and Gen-Alphas swearing up and down that everything ends after that and nothing you do later in life matters.

And while it’s the prerogative of every new generation to be convinced that they’ve figured out the answer to Life, The Universe and Everything, it’s the prerogative of the ones before – the ones who have actual experience and perspective under their belts – to either nod wryly or roll their eyes at people who’ve barely even started their lives making grand declarations about How It All Works. It’s enthusiasm without the benefit of experience or perspective.

So, as I’m often saying: do yourself a favor and go outside and touch grass. Quit paying attention to the Zoomers telling you that life has passed you by if you haven’t achieved everything by your mid-20s. They know nothing about you, your life or your struggles. Most of them affect this attitude because they see their own futures looming and are terrified of it – same as every previous generation.

This is precisely the reason why I tell people to pay attention to what they pay attention to, especially when it comes to social media. Most of the time, you’re taking on noise, not signal, and most of it is designed to get a rise out of you, not to help.

Just as it’s important to eliminate “should” from your vocabulary, cutting out the shit that tells you “it’s too late” – particularly when there’s no actual basis in fact – will go a long way to making you feel better. And that’s going to be important because if you still don’t like yourself very much, other people are going to follow your lead.

Here’s the thing: self-talk is important. If you’re looking in the mirror and saying “ugh, god, why are you even allowed to exist”, then you’re setting up a filter by which you will live your life. You are not just putting that energy out into the universe (as it were), you’re emitting that energy like a passive-aggressive Chernobyl. When you tell people how to feel about you – because you feel that way about yourself – they’ll behave accordingly. People respond to your vibe and react to it; the folks who are most in tune with you will take it onboard, themselves. This is why one of the secrets of being charming and delightful is warmth and friendliness; people pick up on it, feel good in your presence and want to spend more time with you.

It’s also why someone who thinks of themselves as hot as fuck and acts accordingly – even if they’re unconventional-looking – and have people respond to their attitude. Those people are picking up on that person’s vibe and attitude and it carries them along. It’s not being delusional – they’re not looking in the mirror and seeing Idris Elba staring back at them. They just see what they like in themselves, bring that forward and make it their strength. The strength and sincerity of their belief and actions carry over to others and encourage them to see it too.

But here’s the other thing I think you’re missing: being charming is a choice, but not the way you think. Deciding to be charming doesn’t flip a switch and suddenly you are. Deciding to be charming or charismatic or just likeable is deciding to work at it. It’s deciding “OK, I’m going to be more charismatic, so I’m going to start doing the things that improve my charisma.” That would include finding the type of charisma that vibes with your personality, working on things like warmth and approachability, cultivating an interest in other people, learning how to best connect with them.

I mean, call it woo woo all you want, but it’s not a binary where either you have it your you don’t. It’s a skill – something you develop through deliberate practice. All you have to do is look to Hollywood, where people quite literally learn how to make someone feel like the most important person in the room.

And here’s the secret: nobody is born charismatic or popular. Everyone has had to work at it. It feels like there’s a binary because you have a 24-7 feed of your own life and thoughts, but only a very limited highlight reel of other people’s lives. Some folks may have started earlier or have personalities or circumstances that make it easier for them to get good at it, but everyone started from the same place. It just doesn’t seem that way because you weren’t there for the learning phase, nor were you tapped into their thought stream.

Women are out of your reach only in as much as you limit your reach by defining yourself by your perceived limitations.

Work on liking yourself. As you do, you’ll make it much easier to learn the skills that make you a more attractive, more desirable partner. It’s work, sure, but it’s work that’s well worth doing.

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 wrote to you previously about dealing with a breakup a few months ago, as Second and Third Thoughts, so thanks for the response then. Since then I’ve been doing alright and made some positive changes. I went through a period after I graduated from university and returned home where I felt pretty lonely due to most of my friends being from university and not living in my area, and a lot of the friends I usually hung out with in my hometown weren’t there and we’d been growing more distant.��Since I had the tendency during the summer to avoid being social and feel lonely, I had decided to start trying to join new meetups and social circles to try finding new friends and maybe dates. At first it was pretty mediocre; I had joined a few groups based on sports that I decided weren’t exactly social enough for me for a couple of months, and got a job at what I later discovered was a scam company (not working there anymore). This kind of led me to miss my ex a lot and think about her a ton. However, I did end up finding a couple of board game groups where I made some friends, one being a meetup group and one being a tabletop gaming club at the university in the big city near mine. I also found a volleyball meetup at my community centre which is a bit better for me than the last one. With the meetup group I actually did start using a whatsapp group there to start organizing these meetups with some of the people who had went before, and I’ve had success in making friends, even if not particularly close ones, and having fun with some people who’d come more regularly there, which I’m proud of; before this last year I had always been a bit passive socially, and I only really started taking more control and putting myself out there to join clubs and meet people around a year ago, which was how I met my ex in the first place. With the university group, I’ve started making friends with the regulars, and board games make it really easy to have fun and connect with people who are also kind of geeky, which I really like.

The “issue” here, is that I’ve been looking to start dating again and while I’ve had success in making friends, I haven’t actually dated anyone since I broke up with my ex close to 6 months ago now. There have been people I’ve flirted with and asked out, either from my social circle in university prior to graduating or in the job I had and even someone I had met from the meetup group. However, none of these actually went anywhere, and while I definitely feel a big improvement from the start of the summer, where I feel a lot less lonely and I’ve found more of a community, I still haven’t made that leap into actually dating again, which I want to do. It feels like I’ve been taking ‘too long’ to start dating again after my ex, which I don’t really want to happen, and while I respect that I’ve come far from creating my own social circle within the city, it still feels like I’m behind and that I should’ve started dating someone sooner.

In addition, I’m moving to a new university for a graduate program come the fall, and while it’s not that far from the metropolis I live in it still feels like I’m under limited time pressure to start dating again before I have to make new friends and find new people from scratch. As much as I recognize that these are artificial expectations I’m putting on myself, it’s hard knowing there are others who have taking less time to get back on their feet after a breakup and start dating again, even though they’ve come from different circumstances and it says nothing about the quality of relationships they get into. So really, I just want advice here. What am I doing right and wrong here, is there something I should also be doing, et cetera.��SATT Redux

DEAR SATT REDUX: Alright, SATTR, first and foremost, I’m glad to see you’re making these improvements. One of the most important things you can be doing, especially in the wake of your break up is to focus on yourself for a while and address some of the patterns in your life that’re making you unhappy or contributing to your general feeling of malaise and hopelessness.

As a general rule, one of the greatest loves of your life should be the love of your life – that is, being generally happy and satisfied with the life you live, the person you are and feeling like things are pretty good overall.

I realize this seems reductive or counterproductive to your goals – that is, figuring out this whole dating thing – but your longest and arguably most important relationship is going to be with yourself. If your life is focused around a relationship and you fall apart without one, then you’re going to be making yourself miserable and making it that much harder to find or maintain relationships. You will, after all, have times when you’ll be single for longer than you’d prefer or find yourself single unexpectedly. You may even have times where, even when you’re in a relationship, when you’ll be on your own for extended periods of time – whether because of work, health, family issues, who knows. If you don’t have a life of your own, independent of dating or romance, then you’re creating a situation where you’re not looking for a partner so much as a life raft.

That’s not great – both from a “are you in good working order” sense, but also because you’re going to be prioritizing A Relationship (person to be added later) rather than finding someone who’s a good fit for you and who you’re a good fit for. At best, you’ll be finding a lot of poor matches and a series of short term relationships when you’re looking for a long-term one. At worst… well, that’s one way you end up in relationships that should’ve ended a long time ago, but the concept of being single is so horrible that you’d rather stay in a bad relationship than risk leaving it and being alone again.

Having a good life on your own is the foundation that everything else is built on. When you have that, you not only take the pressure off yourself to find A Relationship, but you feel more empowered to take your time, explore things a bit more and really zero in on what you want, instead of hoping to land the next thing that comes down the pike.

Now with that in mind, I want to give you the most deceptively simple, yet powerful advice possible: I want you to take “should” out of your vocabulary. “Should” is telling you that there are rules to this. “Should” is saying that You’re Doing It Wrong. When you say “Should” you’re saying that there’s a ticking clock and if you don’t achieve A Relationship before it reaches zero then you have failed… somehow.

And it’s bulls--t. It’s entirely in your head. These are self-limiting beliefs that do nothing but make you feel bad for no reason. “Should” is the language that convinces you that you’re “falling behind” or that you’re not working hard enough or succeeding fast enough instead of acknowledging that you are on your own path, with your own story, and nobody else’s story will fit you properly.

I understand that, on some level, you feel like you have something to prove. Your last relationship was a disaster and you still have mixed feelings about it. But a new relationship isn’t going to make that past one go away. A new relationship isn’t going to change anything for you that you can’t change on your own. And a new relationship isn’t going to prove anything –not to you, not to your ex or to the universe.

You’ve “taken too long” to start dating after your break up? Says who? Where is that written? What is the exact time limit between when you’ve broken up and when you should get back into dating again?

You’re “falling behind”? Falling behind who, exactly? Why is it bad to “fall behind”? Do you think that love is a Battle Royale, where the people in last place are systematically eliminated? Is there a prize for being “ahead” of other people?

(Well, besides divorce and therapy if you’re lucky; trying to play off sexual abuse as being just that goddamn sexy if you’re not a la Chris Brown and others).

Who measures these things and why should you care what they think? Strangers on the Internet who tell you that you need X number of relationships within Y years in order to be dateable? Random TikToks from people you’ve never met, who know nothing about you or your circumstances, making declarations that have nothing to do with you? Is there a prize for out pacing everyone else?

Other people have gotten back on their feet in shorter time than you, sure. But so what? They have nothing to do with you. They are not the yard stick against which your life is measured. Other people have taken much longer than you. That doesn’t make them worse or sadder. It’s just their story, not yours.

To mangle a line from Seanan McGuire: if a crow spends too much time staring at a frog, it will think it’s bad at jumping instead of remembering it can fly.

You say that you recognize that this is all self-imposed… well, if it’s self-imposed, then you can unimpose it. You can stop telling yourself that you “should” do this and just choose to live your life. If you meet someone awesome while you’re out living your life, then that’s great! If you don’t… well, you’re living a good life and you’ll meet someone later and that’s fine.

And that’s before we even get into the fact that you’re about to up stakes and go back to school for your graduate degree. So you’ve given yourself an artificial deadline where you “should” be focusing on getting a girlfriend. But not only is that self-imposed, but you may not realize you’ve also given yourself a relationship cut-off point.

While it varies from program to program and discipline to discipline, grad school tends to be a nightmare when it comes to work/life balance. A lot of long-term marriages feel the strain that comes from getting an advance degree.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying you can’t or shouldn’t (there’s that word again) date now or in grad school, but you want to understand exactly what it is that you would be signing up for if you were to make the day you leave to start your grad program the end date for finding a new girlfriend.

Any relationship you start now is going to be like a Japanese game show – running as fast as you can at a series of doors and hoping you pick the one that actually opens, instead of slamming into a wall. And to be honest the odds that you will have found something between now and then and have had the time to solidify your relationship, build that mix of connection, intimacy, affection, respect, trust and commitment that will make it through the buzzsaw of grad school is… low. It’s not impossible, but I wouldn’t necessarily be betting money on it lasting.

And while there’s a lot to appreciate about short term relationships, I suspect another short-term one right now will do you far more harm than good.

Hence: take “should” out of your vocabulary. If something comes along, then that’s awesome, and you should enjoy it for what it is, not for what you think it’s going to mean. But focusing on having a good life instead will mean that you enjoy the time you have far more. It means that you’ll be more relaxed, more confident and happier overall. And that means that, should serendipity happen and you do meet somebody incredible, you’ll not only feel more at ease and unpressured, you’ll be in a much better position to take full advantage of the opportunity.

And because you’ll have that solid foundation of friends, passions, hobbies and general satisfaction with your life, you’ll have improved the likelihood of making this relationship a success… instead of another complicated knot of messy feelings and regrets.

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 got a conflict that’s not really about dating, but I could really use some advice on how to navigate this tricky situation.��So here’s the deal: my close friends, let’s call them Sam and Alex, were in a serious relationship for a few years. But things went south when it came to light that Alex cheated on Sam. It was a big mess, emotions were all over the place, and ultimately, they decided to break up. I don’t know the details that lead up to it, the third party isn’t in our friend group, I don’t know who’s “at fault” if anyone; I just know what I told you.

I say that because the problem is that this is causing all kinds of tension in our overall friend group. Everyone’s been feeling the pressure to take sides and decide who they can be friends with and who they can’t. Speaking just for myself, I’ve been friends with both of them for a long time, and I’m not sure how to handle things post-breakup. I can see why Sam is hurt and betrayed, and I can also understand that people make mistakes and maybe Alex is genuinely sorry. It’s a tough spot to be in, and I don’t want to take sides or choose one over the other.

On one hand, I feel like I should be there for Sam, supporting them through this tough time because they’re really hurting. But on the other hand, I don’t want to abandon Alex either, especially if they genuinely regret their actions and are trying to make amends.

I’ve considered trying to remain neutral and stay friends with both of them, but I’m worried that might not be practical or even possible. There’s a lot of tension between them, and hanging out together as a group seems awkward and uncomfortable now. And I’m going to be real, there’s a LOT of talk in the group chat about who is or isn’t siding with who and I feel like I’m going to be the asshole if I side with Alex or if I stay neutral.

I don’t want to be seen as betraying Sam’s trust by being friends with Alex, but I also don’t want to turn my back on a friend who might need support and a chance to grow from their mistakes.

What should I do, Doc? Is it possible to remain friends with both of them, or do I have to pick a side? I feel like I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place here. Any advice on how to handle this situation would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Tired of Playing Referee

DEAR TIRED OF PLAYING REFEREE: Alright, I’m going to preface this by saying that I don’t think cheating is necessarily the worst thing that someone can do in a relationship, nor do I think that all cheating is equal. Other people obviously disagree, but my general philosophy on infidelity is going to color my advice on all of this.

This is a tricky knot to untangle, TPR. It’s not unusual for break ups to test the bounds of social circles in the aftermath. There are a lot of times when one person or the other “gets the friends” in the break up. These sorts of fissures tend to fall in fairly predictable lines; most of the time, the split occurs either along longevity (So-and-so was part of the group first), closeness (you’re tighter with one than the other) or fault (Such-and-such was a cheating piece of s--t).

But it’s also not unusual for folks to say “I’m not taking sides” or “I’m not choosing”. Though, to quote the sages, even choosing not to choose, you still have made a choice. Often, it’s more about trying to avoid confrontations or having to take responsibility for having to make a choice and letting others decide it for you. But there are times when it’s honestly about being close to both people and not wanting to have to end a relationship with one or the other.

Now, often there are times when the choice is fairly simple, clean cut or obvious. Sometimes one party is very firmly in the wrong and did something that would, understandably be a friendship-terminating event.

Other times though? Well… other times, what is one person’s FTE is another person’s grey area. And cheating, absent relevant information or context can be one of those. It’s also one where the politics of a social circle can become far more prevalent and way the f--k messier.

Here are my thoughts:

First and foremost, as a general rule, I tend to side-eye people who make demands about choosing sides in situations like this. Absent other information (Alex is a serial cheater! Sam has been an abusive partner!) or acts that go beyond the pale (Alex hit Sam, Sam sold Alex’s dog while Alex was out of town), a lot comes down to why you’re being told to choose. And it’s rare that it’s about right or wrong, but about human nature, and humans are messy bitches that live for the drama as a general rule. After all, it’s very easy for people not directly involved to say “how dare you not do X”; binary definitions of good and bad are easy to come by when it’s not your ox being gored. Demanding that others shun the wrong-doer can frequently be more about enforcing conformity or establishing oneself as the arbiter of morality than it is about actually addressing the issue. This is especially true of folks who insist that sides must be taken and there can be no middle ground.

Now, you don’t say if anyone’s actually making demands yet. It sounds like right now it’s mostly a lot of talk back and forth. Were I you, I’d suggest maybe bowing out of the chat for now and making a boundary of not talking about it until you’ve decided. If folks do start making solid demands of “you must side with X to stay in this friends group”… honestly, I’d be questioning how much I’d want to stick around people who make demands like that. Again, depending on circumstances of the actual offence.

But if they’re not? I’d say that you should either mute that particular discussion or turn off notifications for the group chat for a bit until things die down, so you can decide for yourself, without feeling like your choice was pressured one way or the other.

My next thought is, how much of your hesitancy is about being close to both and how much is about not wanting to risk confrontation with either Sam or Alex? This is an important one to consider. Is it possible that you’ve actually made your decision, but you’re worried about having to actually take responsibility for it if either Sam or Alex ask?

(As callous as it may sound, this is where flipping a coin may be helpful to sort out how you feel. Assign heads to Sam and tails to Alex and flip it. It doesn’t matter which actually comes up; as soon as the coin is in the air, you’ll know which you’re hoping to see. And that may well give you the answer in terms of whether this is legitimate indecision or not.)

The next thought after that: talk to them both. Talk to Sam and commiserate and be sympathetic. Talk to Alex and say “what the f--k, dude?” and hear what he has to say. Maybe you’re correct and this was a moment where he failed his wisdom save and there but for the grace of God go the rest of us. You may well be correct that he feels awful about it and wants to do better.

How does he talk about it? Does he dodge responsibility or accept it? Is he making excuses as to why this wasn’t so bad, or does he demonstrate that he knows what he did wrong and owns his choices? Does he know why he did it and can he explain how he ended up there? For that matter, does he play the “woe is me” card by being so remorseful that you almost feel like you’re being obligated to forgive him?

Just as importantly, since you know both people: are they both equally trustworthy? Are either of them prone to drama, tend to make themselves out to be the hero/victim regardless of circumstance? If Sam tells you one story and Alex tells you a different one, can you say with some degree of certainty that it’s a Rashomon situation where everyone is giving an honest retelling of the event as they saw it? Or is one of them likely to be telling you the version they think you want to hear? Or the one that puts them in the best light?

And, as cold-blooded as this may sound: if the group splits… are you going to be ok staying neutral or choosing one person or the other if that means the possibility of losing friends in the process? I don’t ask because there’s a “correct” answer here, I ask because it’s important to understand where your head is at with this and how the consequences of your choices may shake out. Just as with flipping the coin, you may well come to realize that you’ve already decided, but you worry your choice will come with costs that you are hesitant to pay.

Now, I can’t tell you which way to lean on this – towards Alex, towards Sam, towards not choosing. I’m not there, they’re not my friends and so on. Not choosing and trying to stay close to both is an option.

However, one thing to keep in mind is that, however you choose, you may still not see results you’d prefer. You could decide to stay close to both, but find that some of the people in your social circle fall away – either because you chose “wrong”, or simply because the fractures of this relationship revealed faut lines within the social circle.

You may also choose one or the other and find that they still drift out of your life. Or that the person you didn’t choose comes back into it eventually.

As I said: it’s a messy situation, and one that can end up being more complicated because of the aftershocks more than the initial event. The best advice I can give you is to make sure you know your own mind and why you make the decision you ultimately land on. The more you at least understand yourself and your choices, the more comfortable you likely are to be with what you finally decide.

Yeah, there may well be after effects that you can’t possibly account for. That’s life, unfortunately. None of us can thread the needle so well that everything remains, if not the same, at least tolerably similar. The best we can do at any time is make the best choice we can with the information we have in that moment and do our best with whatever happens next.

Good luck.

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