DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I noticed something that may or may not be holding me back in terms of dating. That I’m, well, frankly perhaps too selective, too picky and get easily turned off by well a lot.

For example I don’t like smokers; I can’t take the smell, the breath is awful is and well frankly they’re slowly killing themselves with cancer sticks and I don’t wanna be part of that ride. I don’t wanna date a virgin (compared to another guys who want a virgin) because being a virgin in your 20s is a walking pile of red flags cause well if nobody wants to sleep with you this late in life that must speak volumes of your character. I don’t wanna date fat people because I don’t find them sexually appealing or attractive nor can I picture having sex with one and sex is very important to me. I don’t wanna want to date a Christian or anyone religious because that sounds like an incredibly dull, restrictive life style and there is a non-chance they’re probably racist or homophobic which GTFO with that. I don’t wanna date with autism (despite being one) or any mental problems I’m not a therapist or a punching bag (both metaphorical or very literally) I’ve got my own s--t to deal with and I don’t want to be dumped with more.

I know people say be open minded and people change my mind but don’t open your mind so wide that your brain falls out. So what do I do then? How do I stop writing off people so easily based on one characteristic? Or dismissing them based on immutable or very mutable characteristics? Am I being too shallow? How do I overcome this? Should I forced to date people that I’m not attracted too?

Sincerely, 

Don’t Gamble with Maybes

DEAR DON’T GAMBLE WITH MAYBES: Right off the bat, DGWM: you can you can set your standards wherever you choose and be as restrictive or permissive as you want. If you decide that the only people you would want to date are PhD candidates who sing Italian opera and paint Warhammer minis semi-professionally, then that’s your lookout. Similarly, you can have as many dealbreakers as you choose to. If someone parting their hair on the left instead of the right is something you can’t stand, then you do you my guy.

But there’s a corollary to that: the longer your list of dealbreakers and the higher and more exclusive your standards, the shallower and smaller your dating pool will be. The more reasons you have to not date someone, the longer you’ll be single. That’s the inevitable trade-off, and you have to decide for yourself if that’s worth it for you. For some people, it absolutely is. But it also makes it much harder for people to be sympathetic if and when those people complain about how long they’ve gone without a date or how hard it is to find a partner. They set that difficulty level themselves; they’re free to lower it to something easier if they prefer. Nobody is telling them to date people they’re not attracted to; they’re just saying “you did this to yourself.”

Now, it’s tempting to just leave things there and move onto the next letter. But I think one thing that is important for everyone is to occasionally take stock of ones must-haves and ones dealbreakers and examine them and ask yourself “why do I feel this way?” It’s important because sometimes what we assume are our standards or our dealbreakers aren’t necessarily accurate. That is: there’s what we think we want and what we think we don’t want and then there’re things that we actually do want or can’t work with. Sometimes they’re the same thing. Sometimes, they absolutely aren’t. And sometimes they say more about us than they do about the people we do or don’t want to date.

Take appearance and looks, for example. Nobody would say that they like dating people who they find unattractive. But it’s good to ask why is a particular look or set of features important to you or important for them to not have. A lot of the reason, for example, why East and South Asian men struggle with dating isn’t because they’re inherently unattractive but because of a literal centuries-long campaign of proclaiming them to be sexually null. From the days of when Chinese labor helped build the railroads to today, Asian men have been othered; when they weren’t portrayed as being filthy and diseased degenerates, they were being portrayed as asexual and effeminate – as opposite of “traditional” masculinity as one could find. Black women, likewise, struggle with dating in part because of cultural hegemonic values that continually elevate northern European features in women while denigrating features more likely to be found in indigenous people – flatter faces, broader noses, thicker cheekbones, darker skin tones and so on.

The same goes with fatness. A lot of men actually are attracted to fat women… but they don’t want to be seen as someone who “has” to date fat women. Because of how fatness is treated, how we equate body composition with personality types, with moral judgement and attractiveness, being fat is treated as a social failing… but being with a fat person is seen as being even worse. It’s taken as “proof” that the person who’s with them has “settled” or is somehow “reduced” to being with them, even if the reality is that this person has actively chosen a fat partner and is thrilled by his or her body.

This is especially true among men, where much of our supposed value and status as men is equated with the “quality” (read: conventional attractiveness) of the people we sleep with. The social shaming of a man who dates a fat woman is part of enforcing that cultural hegemony and reinforcing the standards that men are “supposed” to derive their status from. Someone who willingly bucks those trends and doesn’t allow the opprobrium to force them back in line threatens that social order.

So it’s always worth examining your preferences and trying to determine where they came from and how many of them are actually what you want or what you’ve been told you should want.

And this is important because it applies to your dealbreakers as well: how many of those are because of experience and self-knowledge and how many of those are based around either received information or even just supposition and ignorance.

Case in point: you wouldn’t want to date a virgin because an older virgin is a walking pile of red flags. Ok… says who? What makes you certain that an older virgin is a virgin because he or she has something wrong with them? Why wouldn’t it be a sign of, say, someone who has high standards and only wants to have sex with someone they love? Or who didn’t want to f--k just anyone, but the only single people around were folks who demonstrated through their actions that not f--king them was the right choice?

Why couldn’t it be a sign of someone who, until recently, didn’t make dating or relationships a priority? Or who may not have had many opportunities to date for reasons that are outside of their control? Would you assume that a gay man who’s a virgin at 20 to be a “walking pile of red flags” when they were the only out gay person in their very conservative town? Or who lived in a place where being openly queer meant running the risk of being beaten, jailed or even killed? Why would that be a mark against them, rather than just a series of unfortunate circumstances that made having sex a nigh-impossibility?  

Similarly, not wanting to date a Christian. As much as I have my issues with organized religion in general, being religious doesn’t automatically mean that someone is a bigot or a homophobe. Yeah, there are a lot of bigoted people out there who are Christian. There’re lots of people who are bigots who aren’t Christian too – not just followers of other religions but atheists and agnostics as well. Similarly, being Christian (or Jewish or Hindu or Muslim or Sikh or pagan or…) doesn’t automatically mean they’re racist or homophobic; there’re many, many churches and denominations that aren’t just accepting of queer people but welcoming and supportive. There’re churches and denominations that are actively anti-racist and for whom civil rights and social justice are a core component of how they’re called to love and to serve.

The same goes with their beliefs and restrictions. Not every branch of Christianity insists that dancing is a sin and having fun is how the Devil gets you, any more than all Jews are like the ultra-Orthodox who believe in the strict separation of the sexes, or how all Muslims or Hindus are like their most extreme examples. Hell, even within groups that do theoretically have firm beliefs and restrictions, that doesn’t mean that people obey them. Catholicism specifically forbids any form of contraception that isn’t “natural family planning” (aka the rhythm method). Despite this, 99% of Catholics report using non-permitted forms of contraception including IUDs, condoms, hormonal birth control or sterilization.

Then there’s the question of whether you’re rejecting people for the same things you would hope that they would show you grace on. You say you’re autistic and yet you wouldn’t want to date another autistic person. But why would the reasons you list for not wanting to date someone who’s autistic not also apply to you? Would other people be right to exclude you from their dating pool because you’re autistic and would you cheer their right to do so? Or would you be hurt that they couldn’t see you as a person, rather than a label or a stereotype – especially stereotypes that are frequently inaccurate or outright malicious?

Are you treating potential partners as therapists or punching bags? Are you capable of not making someone you date responsible for your mental health or “dumping your problems” on them? If you’re fully capable of handling your own issues or managing them in ways that are appropriate, why wouldn’t other people in circumstances similar to yours be just as capable?

Now to be sure: none of this means that you are wrong for having standards or that your standards are bad and you should feel bad. Nor does it mean that the point of examining your standards or deal breakers is to come around to being open to all and sundry. It’s simply to be more mindful and self-aware of what you’re doing and why. It could well be that yes, you’re just attracted to a particular body type or have a preference to some and not others. You could come to recognize that you’ve had enough negative experiences with people with strong religious beliefs that you can’t fully relax or open up in ways that you would need to in order to make a relationship work.

But you could also come to realize that some of what you see as a dealbreaker is born out of ignorance or prejudice. You might recognize that things you find unattractive or undesirable in others are a reflection of how you feel about yourself. Or you might realize that some of what you think you want is more about what other people think or would judge you for, rather than something than being a true desire or true dealbreaker.

You might even realize that things that were important to you at one stage of your life aren’t as important to you now. You may find that your tastes have changed or that experience has taught you differently and what you think is important is actually far less of a priority than it was before.

Or maybe you’ll come to the conclusion that nope, this is how it is, this is how your heart and your junk work and you’re still comfortable with keeping your standards where they are.

The only person who can decide any of this is you. Which means that the consequences of those decisions – both positive and negative – are solely up to you as well. The more you understand yourself and your choices, the better and more informed decision you can make.

Good luck.

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DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’m a 20 year old female and he’s 21. He’s an international student and been in the states for 3 years now. We are both in college. (Different race but we do have the same religion). 

It’s been more than a year since we started talking. We were in the talking stage at first he cooked for me and gave me flowers on our first date and we had sex. It was unexpected cause we weren’t planning to do it but it’s just happened. We talked for 2 weeks and then he ended up ghosting me. Also he does get depressed often cause he misses his family and only have few friends here and not really mature. 

After ghosting me for 3 weeks he apologized sent me a huge essay and tried to make it up to me. I didn’t really care. I’m not a sensitive person and I try to stay unbothered. So when he asked for a second chance I was like “okay” and it turned it into a FWB and he made it clear he is not in a place to date anyone. 

I’m guessing he just doesn’t wanna date (me). 

We would ghost each other for no reason sometimes we would get into fights and stop talking but he would come back every time. 

Also we are really good friends too if we are not having sex. We would still talk about our families, friends and about our life for hours. We have a few great memories together and we would both talk about it sometimes. He was talking to this one girl 5 months ago he told me about it and we stopped talking too cause he does stay loyal when he’s talking to someone. They didn’t even last a month and we started having sex again. 

But why did he try to date other girls when he is not ready for a relationship? I didn’t ask him any questions about it cause I know if me and him get into a relationship it won’t work out for a lot of reasons but I do like him a lot but that doesn’t mean I think of him 24/7 or trying to have something serious. I also got into a relationship last year and it only lasted 2 months I ghosted him too when I was with my ex. But we are both single now and two days ago we were talking on the phone and he started saying stuff like “I still remember our first date it was like a movie. I would like to do it again. I will give you flowers again too” which made me wonder: does he still like me? I know he used to like me a lot when we first started talking but it’s been more than a year now. If he doesn’t wanna date (me) specifically, why didn’t he ever give me a reason? I never really asked though. Also he does tell me things like “I do think about you”. Sex is great and we both crave each other a lot. I think my attachment to him is more of a sexual nature. 

I don’t really have romantic thoughts about him but I know if he ever asks me to give us a try. I might. 

So what are we?

Friends With Benefits Package

DEAR FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS PACKAGE: Far be it from me to question how people define their relationships (actually that’s a lie, I do that professionally) but I’m going to be honest: saying “we’re good friends if we’re not having sex” made me cock a skeptical eyebrow. That seems to conflict with the way the two of you behave – both when you’re having sex and when you’re not.

To be sure, I don’t think every friendship needs to be a constant connection, and there’re many friendships that work well even with long periods of radio silence before picking up where things left off like no time had passed. But the way the two of you seem to ghost each other at the drop of a hat is concerning at the very least. It seems difficult at best to build the sort of connection and trust that’s a core of a strong friendship when the other person seems to drop off the face of the planet at random intervals, followed by elaborate apologies. At best that strikes me as being dysfunctional and more than a little exhausting.

This is a case where the two of you are both young and inexperienced and sort of fumbling forward with good intentions, if not with good grace. I don’t, for example, think that your sometime FWB is trying to keep you on the hook or backburner you so that he always has something to come back to. I think he’s being honest in saying he’s not really in a place to date – and I agree with him. ��The problem is that while he’s right about not being ready to date, I think it’s for the wrong reasons.

I realize that sounds a bit absurd – who cares what the reasons are if the outcome is the same? It matters because of how it affects his behavior, and how his behavior affects others.

Case in point: his relationship with you. For someone who theoretically doesn’t want to be in a committed relationship, he comes on very strong and conveys an entirelydifferent message. His first date with you – flowers, cooking dinner, etc. – is the sort of thing I would not only expect on maybe a third date but also from someone who’s looking for something more committed. As I’ve said many times before: being in a casual relationship doesn’t mean that you can treat your partner casually, but that’s the sort of date that gives a strong impression of wanting romance and long-term commitment.

The same applies to his flowery apologies and declarations of how he can remember your date and wants to do it all again but moreso. Those are the sorts of things I would expect to hear from someone who is looking for a serious girlfriend, not an FWB. This conflict between what he says and what he does is almost custom made to create a lot of confusion and frustration.

It’s also really not fair for the people on the receiving end of these mixed signals. This sort of behavior – especially for someone who may not have a lot of experience themselves – can end up creating situations that ultimately waste people’s time. This is especially true for an on-again/off-again relationship like yours; it leaves one or both people on the hook as the other vanishes only to come back later and restart the whole messy saga – making it that much harder for either partner to find a relationship that might better meet their needs.  

And here’s the especially frustrating thing: I don’t think the issue is that he doesn’t want to date you, per se. From the way the two of you keep ending up back in bed together, I feel safe in saying that the two of you clearly have an emotional connection and no small amount of physical chemistry, considering how frequently the two of you end up falling back in bed after weeks or months of not talking. If I were to guess, I think the issue is more banal. I’d wager cash money that the real issue is down to his being in his early twenties, at college in a new country. I suspect that he worries that maybe things moved too fast or he’s afraid that if he starts to see you exclusively he’ll end up feeling like he’s missing out on other opportunities… even if it means giving up what might otherwise be a good thing. It’s FOMO to an absurd degree: giving up what he has that he clearly likes for the vague possibility that something more is out there.

And therein lies the problem. I think the real reason he’s not boyfriend material right now is that he doesn’t know what he wants, he’s afraid of making a “mistake” and he doesn’t know how to communicate this. So instead of being able to be up front about it, having the wherewithal to stop keeping you on the hook or talking things through so that you and he could figure out if it’s worth trying to make this work he just… bounces. And then comes back. And bounces again.  

And  if I’m being honest, it doesn’t seem like you’re handling it much better than he is. You’re not exactly covering yourself in glory here either. You say that you’re pretty sure you wouldn’t want to date him if it were an option… but you’re still doing this dance with him. You seem as prone as he to just dropping off the face of the planet as he, and just as unwilling to either put the brakes on this or to call the question. So instead you find yourselves in this position of bouncing off each other constantly, rebounding towards one another and then bouncing away again.

If that was something that you both discussed and both agreed you were ok with it, that would be one thing. But right now it seems to me like neither of you are willing to so much as call the question, never mind actually commit to something. So instead, you’re in this quasi-relationship that’s neither fish nor fowl and doesn’t seem to actually satisfy either of you. I keep wondering if the sex is enough to make up for the rest of the frustration and the way it keeps either of you from ever moving on.

This is why emotional intelligence and self-awareness are important parts of dating successfully. Part of it is recognizing a bad or problematic situation, even if aspects of it are acceptable or even enjoyable. Right now, it doesn’t seem like either of you are doing a great job of communicating or advocating for your own needs, nor at balancing having a friendship with one person with having a romantic or sexual relationship with another. None of that bodes well for anything long term– either with each other or with other people.

One or both of you need to s--t or get off the pot. While I’m a firm believer that friendship and sex aren’t mutually exclusive, that requires more maturity and stronger communication than either of you are exhibiting right now. That’s something that can be improved over time… but it’s progress that neither of you can really make until you both can actually break this cycle and make it stick.

My advice would be to drop the sexual side of things and commit to being friends until you both get better at both knowing what you want and being able to communicate those needs. Yes, this runs the risk of one or both of you ending up with someone else… but right now it certainly doesn’t seem like you’re in a place where you’d be right for each other. In the future you may well be, and you may get there in time. But for now? I think the two of you are hindering each other’s growth more than helping.

Good luck.

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DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I have a problem so bizarre I’ve literally never heard anyone talk about anything like it, no matter how much out-there sex-and-gender related stuff I read, desperately trying to figure myself out.

It’s like this… In real life I am about the most androgynous, gender-nonconforming person you could find. Since my earliest childhood memories I have rabidly hated anything feminine on my body: skirts, pastels, flowers, ruffles, hair more than 2 inches long, jewelry, makeup, purses, bras. But I don’t feel masculine either, or even butch. I am physically weak, soft, shy, anxious, tender-hearted, submissive in every possible way. I’m barely 5 feet tall so could hardly pass as a man, but too fat to have a recognizably female shape. I can universally be found in black sneakers, khakis and plain solid-color shirts at work, jeans and nerdy T-shirts outside work. I wear “women’s” pants and “men’s” shirts because they fit my body better, but nothing too gendered in style. Cashiers and strangers don’t know what to make of me. I’ve long just accepted sir and ma’am equally, and whatever pronouns anyone wants to use for me.

My romantic fantasies, on the other hand are so ridiculously binary and gender-conformist, it’s embarrassing. Big, strong, heroic, ass-kicking alpha males rescuing and protecting and worshiping beautiful, delicate, petite girly girls. It literally never varies. For the past decade plus I’ve identified as bisexual because I find both men and women attractive. But I’m only into hetero sex. I find the idea of M/M repulsive, which I guess is understandable but the idea of F/F, which you’d think I’d be into, not repulsive, just extremely boring. Either one of the women is more butch, which I don’t find attractive, or they’re both beautiful and feminine, so there’s no bigger, stronger protector, so no sense of romance. And when it comes to the thought of a nonbinary person like myself in sexual situations, we circle right back around to repulsive.

So I’ve wondered if I might actually have some weird new niche asexual-spectrum identity, despite being mentally obsessed with sex and romance and masturbating pretty much nonstop since I was about 14. For the first few years of my sexual awakening I suffered a ton of angst over not being attractive and the thought that I would never have the kind of romance I couldn’t stop dreaming about. I would have gladly become a thin pretty girl if a fairy godmother offered to transform me. But gradually I accepted myself and now would not change even if I could. Because even becoming a beautiful woman would mean only having sex as a woman…only really feeling the woman’s emotions, not the man’s, but getting to touch and worship and wonder at the man’s body, while merely inhabiting the woman’s. But in my fantasies I can imagine both the man’s and woman’s bodies, emotions and sensations in equal detail. Really my dream is to be some kind of disembodied love goddess who brings all these different beautiful damsels in distress together with their hot powerful male rescuers and soulmates and telepathically experiences sex through both of them. But I’m still in touch enough with reality to know how that sounds when I put it into words like that. 

I guess the embarrassing part is not so much these feelings and questions themselves, but that I should have this more figured out by now. I’m not a teenager or college kid still developing and exploring myself…I’m in my late thirties! And when it comes to real world experience I’m still a virgin who has never even kissed anyone or been on a date, which is embarrassing all by itself. I had a couple of crushes in high school on guys way out of my league who rejected and devastated me. But since then I’ve done my best not to even let myself feel attraction toward anyone I know in real life.

I’m blessed to be part of an amazing close-knit friend group that formed in late elementary and early middle school. However by this point in our lives they are all married and mothers of kids ranging from infant to middle school themselves. Most of their spare time is spent catering to their kids and husbands, leaving less and less for me. But whenever I mention this as a concern, as I head into middle age alone with no close living family, significant health issues and a very low income, the only solution they seem to come up with is I need to “find someone!” They seem especially eager to help me date women, which I think is partly to give them a chance to demonstrate what good progressive allies they are. But I also get the sense they think women are less looks-obsessed than men, so it would be easier to find a woman who’d settle for me.

I have a hard time getting across to them just how negative I feel about the whole idea of dating. Not only do I have zero hope of being able to attract anyone, man or woman, that I would also be attracted to. But when I try to think about actually having sex, in reality, as myself, it’s the same as when I try to think about fat or unattractive people in general, or androgynous people, or F/F…it’s like eating a big gross pile of mental vegetables, instead of the mental steak f--king a cake that is my typical fantasy. And just like eating vegetables, I know it’s “good” for me but every bite has to be forced, I get no pleasure from it, I end up feeling sort of sick and it’s not sustainable as a habit.

I don’t think any of my friends grasp the fullness of my fantasies, because I’ve had to massively tone down the amount I talked about them, because they couldn’t seem to believe someone as hypersexual and hopelessly romantic as me would not want to at least try to experience it in real life. They seem to think my only problem is low self-esteem, unrealistic beauty standards and struggling to accept myself as non-cishet due to my conservative religious upbringing. When, as you can see there’s so much more to it. It’s not that I’m not horribly lonely at times…fantasies can only go so far, after all…I just can’t begin to picture what a relationship involving me would look like, and don’t enjoy trying.

So that’s where I am. In your opinion, what even is my orientation? Is my choice not to try to date a healthy one, or is it actually just low self-esteem? Is it fair to depend on my friends so much more because I’m too much of a special snowflake to find a partner to lean on like everyone else? Arrrrrggghhhhh!!!!

Binary Lover Outside the Binary

DEAR BINARY LOVER OUTSIDE THE BINARY: If you’ve read me for long enough, I think you can see the “this isn’t the problem you have” coming from a mile away. But it wouldn’t be me if I didn’t dig into the why it’s not the problem you think it is before I answer you.

Now for the first question… well, straight up, I’m not the person to tell you your orientation. Leaving aside that I’m a straight cis man and don’t have the same perspective that a queer person would, I’m also not you. You know yourself better than I ever would.

What I would say is that sexuality is frequently a multiaxis graph, not just a linear spectrum. Yes, there’s “attracted to same sex/ attracted to different sex” on one axis, but there’s other aspects like whether you’re interested in sex in and of itself or, for that matter, whether you have sexual desire but no interest in having it reciprocated and might feel weird if it was – an orientation known as lithosexual. Let’s  be honest: humans are weird. We’re ghosts generated when enough voltage gets run through tapioca to make it hallucinate calculus. We pilot meat suits that have so many variations and mutations and odd combinations of DNA and chromosomes that we only fall into a binary if you squint really really hard. And even then, the identity of the pilot doesn’t always match the mech exterior.

Now let me ask you something in return: is it important that you have a label on it? Is it important that you’d need a label right now? Would a label give you anything more than a name and a set of expectations for you and others to follow? If it wouldn’t, why would those expectations be so important if they don’t necessarily line up with who you are or what you want? Would you feel better if you gave yourself permission to throw your hands up and say “f--k if I know?” and just let it be whatever it is in the moment?

Here’s the thing: you’re non-binary – not necessarily one gender or the other. But to my layman’s understanding, that doesn’t mean that you’re necessarily agender, nor are you locked in the exact 50/50 of male or female, just that you don’t fit in the mold of “either one or the other”. Is it possible that in looking for a the binding of label, you’re missing that you could be more fluid depending on the moment or the day – a little more femme some times, a little more masc on others, a little more butch some days and a little more twink on still others?

One of the things about gender is how much of it is a performance, rather than something embodied. The attributes associated with something doesn’t necessarily define it. I’m reminded when Frank Zappa was interviewed by Joe Pine who asked him “You have long hair. Does that mean you’re a woman?” Zappa immediately responded with “You have a wooden leg, does that mean you’re a table?” Much like dickheads who think smugly asking “what is a woman?” is being oh-so-clever, Pine wanted to get an easy zinger, never expecting Frank f--king Zappa rolling in like Diogenes holding up a plucked chicken yelling “BEHOLD A MAN”. ��Gender is often as much about what you do and the energy you give as it is what’s in your pants, what cut of shirt you’re wearing or how you style your hair. Being not just gendered, but gendered and sexually desired as that gender doesn’t always require that you hew tightly to the strict binary. David Bowie and Grace Jones famously f--ked gender up one side and down the other with their presentation and willingness to eschew binary-based actions and behaviors. Prince didn’t fit most “traditional” ideas of masculinity – being short and slim, delicate-featured to the point of near femininity, with kohled eyes, curled hair, poets’ shirts and skin-tight velvet pants. And yet he was the living avatar of ‘you sexy motherf--ker’; not just a man but a sexual tyrannosaurus.

You mention that in your fantasies, you like the idea of both exploring the body of very femme women and very masculine men, both internally (by inhabiting them) and externally (by f--king them) and how both the men and women are at either end of the spectrum. I don’t think that’s inherently a contradiction of who you are or your gender; I think that’s more of a reflection that both exist within you. At the same time, you mention the disgust of the ideas of people who seem more like you – either non-binary or not super-femme or super-masc… and I wonder if perhaps that’s more about you having unresolved issues with yourself and your own body mixed with messages about how men and women are “supposed” to be. You see yourself as insufficiently either and rather than seeing this as “well, perhaps I could be either or both or neither”, you see this as a failure to successfully inhabit one or the other as society has insisted you should be.

But maybe the issue is the idea that one has to be so fully at one end of the spectrum or the other in order to “truly” be their gender. Especially when gender is as much of a multi-axis graph as sexuality.

I wonder, perhaps, if part of the problem is that you’re out there on your own and not seeing how other people may have squared this particular circle. From the way you’ve described your social circle, it sounds like most of your friends are pretty strictly cis and predominantly heterosexual. Maybe it would help for you to get more involved with the queer community – queer as in non-hetero but also as in non-cisgendered. That doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to find that everyone in the LGBTQ community has it figured out – ask five queer people about gender and you’re going to get six answers and probably seven arguments – but being familiar with a wider array of gender and gender expression may help you put your feelings to words or show you examples that may resonate with you. Seeing how other people live their gender, how they molded and modded their chassis to be their true self and how some may find more freedom in fluidity may help you see options that you never knew you had – or at least give you a greater vocabulary to work with.

It may also help to give yourself permission to explore those sides of yourself more than you have thus far. So far it seems like you long for more stereotypical expressions of gender, but also reject them for yourself due to being insufficiently like the versions found at the most extreme ends of the axis.

What if you allowed yourself to be more masculine on the days you found yourself feeling that way and more femme on the others? Or perhaps if you treated it more like Pratchett’s dwarfs, who only seem mono-gendered? What if you gave yourself permission to explore both the “strong protector” but also the softer, romantic figure, but not tied to gender? Why does the knight have to be the man and the captive the woman?

But what about dating and finding a partner? Is it a wiser choice to sit this out, or is this just low self-esteem talking?

If I’m being honest here, I don’t think the issue is “should you date or not”, nor is it “are you too much of a special snowflake to find a partner”. I think that the issue is that you may not be as far into your journey of understanding who you are as you think you should be. And hey, that’s ok. This s--t is more complicated than a lot of folks would like to believe, and f--k knows that the understanding and knowledge of gender and sexuality that step outside strict binaries gets torched every 30 to 40 years. We saw it when the Nazis destroyed the Institute of Sexual Science, we saw it when the straights decided they had to literally blow up disco and we’re seeing it now when state legislatures ban gender affirmative care and ghouls on social media send their self-appointed goon squad to threaten gyms, bars, schools, libraries and clinics. You’re out here, apparently all on your own, trying to reinvent the f--king wheel from first principles while the loudest voices are the ones shrieking like choleric chimpanzees, flinging flaming s--t at anyone who looks or acts even slightly different from them.  

I think you’d have a better answer for yourself if you knew yourself better and your relationship with yourself were better. This is why I think that getting more involved with the LGBTQ community would be helpful – not just for your identity but also for seeing that dating, relationships and partnerships don’t necessarily need to resemble the model of the strict heteronormative “ideal” that society presents. Having a close-knit circle of friends that you rely on instead of just “a partner to lean on” isn’t lesser; hell, most studies find that relying on one person to be all things is the single greatest strain on a relationship. It may well be that your ideal relationship wouldn’t be romantic or sexual, it would be familial, especially family of choice. Or it may be that you might have a romantic connection with someone but not necessarily a sexual one. Or a sexual one, but not one that people would recognize as traditionally “romantic”. And that’s fine, too. Your relationships don’t need to be fish-or-fowl any more than your gender is or isn’t.

But I think all of it will be much easier once you feel more comfortable and more at home with yourself and your body. Letting yourself be who you truly are instead of who you’ve been told you should be will be transformative, I think. Maybe that will mean leaning a bit more in one direction or the other. Maybe it’ll be more fluid. Maybe it’ll be like Prince or Grace Jones – spitting in the eye of convention and daring someone to tell them that they’re wrong and being all the hotter for it. And if your non-binary nature means being softer and rounder rather than slim or lithe or muscled… that’s no less hot for being unconventional. It’s in the attitude, in the presentation, in the “f--k you, I’m me” of it all and that’s great.

Find the sexy motherf--ker within and I think while the rest will be less of a struggle, if not less complicated. But that’s ok… to paraphrase the sage: with a watch as with people, often it’s the complications that make us more valued.  

Good luck.

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