DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: So my life is Bad. Life sucks, every woman I have feelings for are happy with men I hate, and no women wants me because I’m ugly looking, and I’m a 31 year old kissless virgin so that says it all about how much of a loser I am. Seeing women I’m miserable over with men I loathe and hate, ruins my life because no one cares about me and my loneliness.
I lose out to dudes better looking than me and nobody cares how s--tty I have it, or how much other dudes ruin my life because they’re who the women I tried for wanted over me. Then everybody tells me “date ugly fat women because that’s your league and just accept that’s the way it is.”
Meanwhile I get NOTHING
Whoever said looks don’t matter is a liar
Here’s a list of every woman who treated me badly or who rejected me and friend-zoned me now you know how bad I’ve got it
Rejection 1:
Girl I can’t get over got married and she’s in love with him and it depresses me beyond comprehension that she loves him and she will never love me. I’m absolutely f--king depressed.
I f--king hate him he ruined my life. I asked girls online if he’s better looking than me and they all said yes he was and they’d rather date him than me. Can anybody give me advice that’s beneficial for me? if you say “If you really love her you’d be happy for her” or “move on”, that has no benefits for me it only benefits her POS husband.
I don’t get a bright side or a silver lining or happy ending just f--ked over.
I TOLD HER MY FEELINGS SHE REJECTED ME AND SHE TRIED SETTING ME UP WITH A FAT UGLY GIRL AFTER REJECTING ME. F
K MY LIFE. I HAVE THE WORST LIFE POSSIBLE
Rejection 2:
My prom date who I had a crush on for years made out with another dude in front of me and ran off to f
k him in his car and because she was from out of town she stayed over my place and the next morning after she invited him over so she can make out with him and in his car on my driveway amd people found out and I got humiliated all the way to graduation
Rejection 3:
The girl I had feelings for in high school but who friend-zoned me is getting married to a guy who is cheated on her with a teacher. She started dating him when me and her were seniors and he was a freshman. He’s an absolute scumbag. I truly hate him. He was caught sexting a teacher caught on the news and has been caught texting other girls with intent to cheat multiple times. and now the girl I want is marrying him and
A TEACHER HERSELF
She would use me as the shoulder to cry on and then when she was done crying to me she would have me go away and then she would go back to him after I’m not saying it wasn’t my own fault but to some degree I was used emotionally
and now everybody is happy that they’re getting married it’s like I’m living in the Twilight Zone that people forget that he cheated on her with the teacher and got caught on the news.
Then five years ago when my mom passed away everybody I knew gave me their condolences even people I didn’t like but they still were decent enough to tell me their condolences
EXCEPT HER
She didn’t even give me a my condolences at the minimum despite her feeding me lies saying how me and her were such close good friends. She couldn’t even text me “My condolences” or “Sorry for your loss” not even 2 to 4 words in a text. I go to therapy
BECAUSE
of this experience.
I then messaged her saying how it hurt me that she didn’t say anything I told her how I felt about her I told her that her boyfriend now fiancé is a scumbag I told her she’s dumb for staying with a scumbag like that and the last thing she ever told me was
“F
k you loser sorry you’re so mad at the world”
THE WEEK MY MOM DIED!!!
last thing I ever said to her was “how is that possible? I’m not a scumbag who cheats on you. Isn’t that what you prefer to f
k?” That was five years ago and we haven’t spoken since. The wedding was in July
All my life women I’ve liked rejected me or ignored me. The only time women liked me they were morbidly obese and extremely unattractive but then I would be told to “give them a chance that’s your league anyways at least they’re nice girls” being told to take an L with a smile isn’t a great life. Especially if you compare her to the women who rejected me. Their husbands and boyfriends (WHO I LOATHE) see that I’m with a woman much less unattractive after being rejected by them gives them a whole lot of leverage over me and that’s absolutely humiliating for me like “Haha my girl rejected you and you’re stuck with an ugly woman. sucks to suck loser”. That is HUMILIATION defined, and everybody wants me to embrace this happening and it’s NOT FAIR.
I’ll be happy when a woman hotter than the women who rejected me loves me. Until then, ALL I EVER GOT WAS F--KED OVER NO LUBE OR SPIT AND THEN PEOPLE TELL ME BE HAPPY FOR THE PEOPLE I HATE. TO JUST LIE DOWN AND TAKE IT AND THATS F--KING BULLS--T.
If i lose 130 lbs, and attractive women still think I’m ugly then what am I supposed to do? Do I just Be okay with being a loser by dying alone? Or end up settling for a woman uglier than the women who rejected me, and look like a loser compared to the men I hate and compared to my friends who all have attractive wives and better lives than me? Because no one wants me to have a happy ending apparently.
Happy Endings Don’t Exist
DEAR HAPPY ENDINGS DON’T EXIST: Alright, I’m going to do something I don’t normally do.
For my regular readers, here’s some inside baseball for you: this is a copy/extension of a letter I answered on February 4 – “I’m An Ugly, Lonely Incel Loser. Now What?”. The text of the letter in today’s column is what he included after repeating the previous letter verbatim.
Now, normally, I don’t go in for giving folks multiple bites at the same apple, especially when it’s a copy/paste situation like this, and from someone who is just venting ressentiment about how it’s all unfair and he’s uniquely wronged. And, considering that I brought out The Chair Leg of Truth on a letter this week already, it’s tempting to let this one go to the great killfile in the sky with a satisfying plonk. ��But instead of doing that, I’ve decided to actually answer this. And while there is a certain inevitability to the Chair Leg of Truth being pulled out here, too, I’m not running this to dunk on it. While I don’t have much faith that you’re actually going to read this OR take any of it onboard, HEDE – seeing as, y’know, this is a director’s cut of what you wrote the first time – what I want to focus on is your mindset here and how it’s warping your thinking.
So before we get going, I’d recommend everyone go back and re-read the previous iteration; we’re going to be building on things from there.
Now, I’m going to go ahead and skip the parade of times I’ve dealt with the “I’m too ugly to find love” issue, because in this case it’s not really relevant. So instead, let’s roll it from the top with an obvious question: what makes you think that “a woman who’s hotter than the women who rejected me” is going to make things better? What, precisely, is going to change for you? I’m being serious here, and I want you to really dig in and answer the question: why will that make things better for you?
Now I know the obvious answer is “because a hot woman will love me”, with all the validation you that brings. As is the unspoken – but very loud, regardless – idea that having a hot woman will grant you status and clout within society.
But if you were to be honest, I think the answer is that what you really want is revenge. There’s a lot of “…and then they’ll realize what they missed out on and their boyfriends and husbands whom I hate will be jealous of me and I’ll be vindicated because they’re assholes and now they’re unhappy and I’ll finally be happy because they are experiencing what I experienced and it’ll suck for them instead.”
At the risk of sounding flippant, I think we’ve hit on a big part of why therapy isn’t helping you. And – again, I’m not dunking on you, I’m being sincere here – all of this letter is precisely why you’re single. It has nothing to do with your weight or your looks, and everything to do with the fact that you don’t seem to recognize that other people are people, not objects or robots, and you don’t treat them like people. Moreover, you don’t seem to accept that the world’s focus doesn’t revolve around you. Nobody’s dating someone at you, nobody’s applying “leverage” because of who you are or aren’t theoretically in a relationship with.
One big reason why nobody cares about “how s--tty you have it” compared to them is because most people don’t think about you, period. That’s not because you’re special in some malign way; most people don’t think of most other people, certainly not to the degree that we all fear. Everybody has limited bandwidth and we’re all focused on our own drama; unless we have a particular relationship or reason or they actively draw our attention, the vast majority of people we encounter on a day-to-day basis functionally vanish as soon as they leave our eyeline. That’s not because they’re not special or we’re all callous, it’s because nobody has the bandwidth to waste on everyone we have ever interacted with.
But even more importantly: people aren’t sympathetic to you on this subject because you’ve given them – or anyone, frankly – very little reason to have sympathy in the first place. What they might have because of empathy – and because we’ve all been rejected by people we like – vanishes like tears in rain as soon as you open your mouth.
To wit: you yourself don’t seem to have given thought to anyone else at all if it doesn’t involve how they’ve wronged you in some way by not giving you what you want, the way you want it. And to be blunt: their supposed “crimes” against you are so anodyne that the level of vitriol you’re spitting about it turns off folks who might be sympathetic. So as a result, the only people who are going to agree with you are people who are equally as angry and bitter and solipsistic as you are, because they’re doing the same things.
Now, I’m not going to get into the hyperbole of “my life is the worst ever” by comparing your complaints against people in warzones or whatnot; it’s not helpful and the fact that other people may be suffering more doesn’t make your pain hurt less. Your pain is your pain and it’s real. Comparisons to other people’s pain isn’t going to change any of it.
I am, however, going to point out just how self-inflicted and how self-maintained this pain is, and how petty and self-serving these complaints are when looked at by a dispassionate observer and why you’re not making a great case for how you’ve been wronged.
Rejection 1 is a prime example of what I mean. You don’t love her. I’m not even sure you could say that you love the idea of her, because that would imply a feeling that wasn’t just possession. But part of loving someone is that you want what’s best for them, even if what’s best for them isn’t you. Parents send their children to school hundreds or thousands of miles away, knowing how much they’ll miss them and how that distance means that their children won’t be as involved in their lives, because it will benefit their children’s futures. We say goodbye to people we love, because we know that staying where they are, where we are, isn’t good for them and they need to be somewhere else to thrive.
That doesn’t mean that you can’t be sad about it or have strong regrets that it had to be this way. But it does mean saying “I am putting your happiness over my own, because I want your happiness more than my own”. To quote the sage: “I will hate the man you choose because he is not me, and love him if he makes you smile.”
But more to the point, the thing that makes you “have the worst life ever” is that you told someone you liked her, she turned you down and tried to help you move on by attempting to set you up with someone else, which you took as a dire insult. The crime here, such as it was, was that you weren’t provided with exactly what you wanted or at least a consolation prize that was equal or greater value. That is a pretty good indicator that no, this wasn’t love, this was about not getting the shiny new toy you wanted.
Rejection 2… you actually have more of a case about being mistreated you do elsewhere. I’m gonna give you that. However, it’s not much more of a case, because this still requires that I accept your interpretation as being trustworthy and accurate which… well, I’ll be frank: I don’t. I say this as someone who also had to sit and watch as the girl he had a crush on – the one he had invited specifically to come visit him – hooked up with another guy in front of him all weekend. I’ve had a woman I was hung up on come over to my place with the guy she would start dating a week later, when we had planned for it to be just the two of us hanging out. So I am someone who’s been there and done that and I know exactly how it feels. And it’s from that perspective that I strongly suspect that what you thought this was and what everyone else thought this was were very different things. But again: I get it, especially because I’ve been through something very similar. It sucks, it really does, and at the time it feels like someone jammed an icicle through your torso and into your brain. So in this, you have my sympathy.
The difference, however, is that I got over it. It took some growth and maturity to recognize that I was being an idiot at the time and definitely after, but I got there eventually. You… have not. And you’ve had decades to do so.
Rejection 3, however is the point where it really shows just how much this is about you not getting what you think you’re owed and being pissy because nobody else is honoring the contract that they never signed or even knew existed. We can start with using the term “friend-zone” as though it were a thing that was done to you with malicious intent. Instead, it’s very simple: she thought you were her friend. She wasn’t romantically or sexually attracted to you, but she was trying to be your friend. You, on the other hand, behaved as though your wants were a command and that she was wrongly denying you something that you were owed. This is not how love works, nor is it how relationships work.
The behavior you describe – crying on your shoulder before going off with someone else – is friendship. During times of trouble or when we’re hurt, scared or upset, we turn to our friends for solace. That’s part of how friendship works. She was seeking comfort and reassurance from someone she had assumed was her friend, who could understand why she was sad and would, at the very least, say “there there, that really sucks, I’m sorry you’re hurting.” What she got was someone whose presence in her life came with strings, and who threw a tantrum when she didn’t pay the cost that – again – she never agreed to.
And then, years later, you continue to hold this grudge – long after anyone with some reasonable maturity and emotional intelligence would have gotten over it – and wave it around like it should mean anything to anyone besides you. And while I am sorry for the loss of your mother, that’s not any excuse. It might be more understandable if you hadn’t already established your getting pissy at your high-school crush for rejecting you years prior; as it is, someone not sending you condolences isn’t a reasonable excuse for screaming at them about how s--tty they are for not dating you in high-school. And thinking that going on a tirade where you s--t all over her and her partner is an appropriate response to this is, once again, not going to win you any sympathy points. And that’s assuming people accept your description of how it all went down as being at all accurate. ��Which, for the record, I don’t. As I said: you are not in any way, shape or form demonstrating yourself to be a trustworthy narrator.
Now, notice very carefully how I don’t get into the relative qualities of her boyfriend as a part of how you’ve been wronged. That’s because he’s completely and utterly irrelevant to any of this. Let us be real: his worst crime in your eyes is that he’s f--king the person you like. The rest is how you justify it. He may well be a scumbag, independent of your opinion of him. I have watched people I cared for go off to date folks that I felt were objectively a worse choice than me. In one case, the boyfriend turned out to be an actual don’t-leave-this-man-alone-around-underage-girls monster.
(For those of you who know me personally: no, I’m not talking about you. Or you. You with the face? No, not you either.)
But none of the people they chose to date had anything to do with me. It was never about comparisons or “who was better/who was worse” because that’s not how people choose their partners. None of it was a slight against me or a comment about me or a criticism. I never entered the equation at all. It was about who they were attracted to, who seemed right for them. I didn’t have to be happy about it, but I accepted it.
Just as importantly, none of the partners of the women who rejected you are thinking “yes, yes, get an ugly girlfriend and then I’ll have leverage over you.” They’re not spending their time thinking about you, the way you’re thinking about them. They’re not thinking about you at all. You don’t come up, period, the end. This isn’t Kendrick and Drake, this is a one-sided beef where the other person isn’t even aware that you exist. This is completely and utterly about you and your perceived grievances.
I can tell you, with perfect certainty, that your weight isn’t the problem. Nor is your face. Your problem is entirely about the aggrieved entitlement and the tantrums you throw when you don’t get your way. You’re not interested in relationships or love or happy endings, because you’re not interested in women as people, only points in a game that only you are playing, and not getting the high-score is a crime against God and humanity. Nobody is going to be interested in being a part of that, and nothing about this attitude is going to be appealing to them.
You’re holding onto these grudges and supposed slights that happened to you decades ago, and you have only gotten worse over time. You have allowed them to curdle your soul, and until you’re honest with yourself enough to actually address that, nothing will change.
Now, again, as someone who’s dealt with similar s--t, I would be remiss if I didn’t say that I can very clearly see the pain and chronic untreated depression that’s underlying a lot of this. I think what you need more than therapy – especially since therapists can’t help you with problems you refuse to address – is to talk to a doctor about treatment for depression. I strongly suspect that you might need to look into ketamine-infusion therapy or ECT, because I have a feeling that we’re talking about treatment-resistant depression and things have gotten bad enough that skipping straight to the hardcore s--t is warranted. But – as I’ve said many times before and will do so again – Doctor NerdLove is not a real doctor and you need to talk to an actual medical professional.
But again, if I’m being honest, I’m probably saying all of this for the sake of other readers than for you, HEDE, in hopes that it may prompt some of them to look at their own attitudes if they see a reflection of themselves in yours. The truth of the matter is that this is a situation of your own making. The universe isn’t f--king you over, nor is it refusing to grant you what you deserve. You are the victim only of your own choices and your own attitudes and beliefs, and you have let those beliefs calcify into something akin to stone.
Unless and until you’re willing to do some radical self-examination and a lot of shadow work to go with your therapy, nothing is going to change. The only thing that will happen is that you’re going to get older with nothing to show for it except more anger, more bitterness and even fewer people who are willing to reach out a helping hand.
Please send your questions to Dr. NerdLove at his website (www.doctornerdlove.com/contact); or to his email, doc@doctornerdlove.com