DEAR DR. NERDLOVE:  I’m sure you get a bunch of questions like this, but here goes. I’m a 35-year-old trans guy on the spectrum, and okay with being single. But I’m open to that changing, too, since circumstances are going to force me to change jobs soon, which will have me surrounded by new people.

Two problems keep coming up though. One, I know I’m very cat-social and need to sorta feel people out before I can even think of them as friends. Two, I’m hyperaware of negative, “look at this incel” tropes that get attached to guys like me in pop culture. Yes, I have some degree of anxiety. And yes, I know it can stem from all the social trial-and-error that autism just kinda necessitates. But there has to be a specific way to boost my confidence in case someone shows interest, right?

Feral Cat Attachment Style

DEAR FERAL CAT ATTACHMENT STYLE: I’m going to give you something that will set you free, FCA: when you meet people, assume they like you already. Just as importantly: assume people aren’t mad at you unless they tell you so, directly and unequivocally. Both of these mental reframes will serve you well with meeting people in general and quieting your social anxiety.

Now hold onto those for a second while I help break this down for you. Let’s start with an obvious truth: you’re autistic. Part of what causes a lot of stress for folks with varying flavors of neurodivergence is trying to behave like we aren’t. Yeah, society still pushes people to mask or pretend that the way autism or other neurodivergent conditions affect us are optional. That doesn’t actually change things, especially where your own needs and challenges come into play. It’s possible to get better at reading social cues or picking up on subtext through rote memorization and sheer practice, sure. But life overall will be a lot easier if you state what your needs are – making it clear for example, that you’re not good with subtext and you appreciate it when folks are direct with you. The same goes for saying “I honestly can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic or sincere” or asking for clarification when you don’t understand.

It can feel awkward at first, but only at first. The ease at which you’ll have moving through the world by pushing past that awkwardness and turning expressing those needs into muscle memory will make everything else far easier and less confusing. It’ll even free up your mental bandwidth for being able to learn to read subtle cues more effectively when you need to. After all, it’s a lot easier to run a memory intensive program when you don’t have sixteen other apps also sucking up all the available RAM.

Now here’s another important truth: don’t take on responsibility for what other people think, especially when you don’t know what they think. Don’t assume, especially when those assumptions are built primarily on your anxiety, anxiety that you know you already have. Anxiety lies. It lies all the time. And one of the ways that it lies is that it makes things seem far more ubiquitous and universal than they actually are.

Your comment about negative incel stereotypes about “guys like you” is a big one. Let’s break it down for a second: what do you mean, precisely, by guys like you? Trans men? Autistic trans men? Or older virgin men? Because here’s the thing: “incel” and “incel vibes” doesn’t mean that being a virgin, even a virgin in his 30s. The term “incel” has evolved since it was coined and escaped containment into the modern parlance. Being an incel isn’t about sexual experience or lack-thereof, it specifically refers to the anger, bitterness, entitlement, self-hate and misogyny (and often with misandry and racism for flavor) that grew in the incel community like rapidly metastasizing cancers.

That doesn’t sound like you, or even something that you need to worry about people thinking about you. Nobody is going to look at a guy at work, even someone who may be a little shy or awkward at first, and think “well, this guy’s going to end up in the news for driving a truck into a crowd.” They’re just going to assume that you’re maybe a little shy, maybe a little reserved, until given reason to think otherwise.

In fact, nobody’s going to know you’re a virgin unless you actually tell them. Despite how your anxiety and self-consciousness makes it feel, there are no body language signals or social behaviors or cues that will cause people to clock that you’re a visitor from the Land of the Great Untouched. Nobody will come by and say “hmm, ah 1990, a good year for not getting any” like they’re some sort of f--k sommelier. Nor, for that matter, will most folks care. Not only is it none of their business, but they have no reason to care. One of the great secrets that it seems everyone has to relearn is that we are all way too hung up in our own bulls--t to give much attention to someone else’s. The topic of your sex life (or lack thereof) simply isn’t going to be a matter of concern for anyone, especially if they don’t know you well.

If you’re not radiating hate or resentment for being King of No Bitches �– and it certainly sounds like you aren’t – nobody’s going to assume that about you. Not even if they know you’re autistic. Or trans. Or a virgin. That’s just your anxiety talking and, as we said: anxiety lies. That’s why we call it “anxiety”.

It’s when you let your anxiety dictate your behavior that you run into problems, because you are reacting to things that aren’t necessarily there. That can end up making things harder for you because you are responding to things that haven’t happened. Not even “haven’t happened yet” but “haven’t happened at all”.

Hence the two mindsets I told you about up top. The former is like a Jedi mind trick that you’re doing not just on other people but on yourself. By assuming that people already like you, you are encouraging yourself to behave as though they like you. That means that your body language will be warmer, more open and inviting – as it is with people you are friends with. You will also prime your brain to see things in a more positive light; you’ll be interpreting what they say and the way they say it in ways that make sense if they already like you and think you’re cool. That, too, will affect how you behave with others. And because you are behaving with more personal warmth and friendliness, they’ll be more likely to respond in kind.

Even if you have to give it a few tries of metaphorically sniffing their finger and flinching before you can call them friends, it’ll still be the vibe of a cat that wants to be friends and is trying to trust, not a feral that’s as likely to hiss and scratch as ask for ear rubs. People can tell the difference between someone who’s friendly but shy and someone who’s antisocial.

Similarly, by assuming that people aren’t mad at you unless and until they actually tell you, you are giving yourself permission to doubt your anxiety. You are acknowledging to yourself that hey, you’re not great at interpreting some things and your anxiety means that you’re prone to read meaning that isn’t there. By saying “unless they tell me they’re upset at me, I will believe they are not”, you free yourself from the grip the anxiety has and you don’t have to spend energy and brain cycles trying to be a code breaker, with other people’s moods as the cyphered text. You also aren’t having to labor under the fear that you’ve f--ked up somehow or that everyone dislikes you but also doesn’t respect you enough to tell you to your face. You’re free to just… exist. To take life as it seems to be on the surface.

And here’s the thing that even anxiety-free, neurotypical people often forget too: 99% of life is exactly as it seems on the surface. The amount of subterfuge and coded meaning that people expect or think exists is mostly fiction or specific environments. You’re not living in a world where everyone’s playing poker and having elaborate bluffs at all times; most folks are just trying to get through the day and their secret desires are usually wishing they got extra chips at lunch.

Assume people are friendly and like you already and that they aren’t mad unless they say so. It’ll make the rest much, much easier and happier 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

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE:  I pen this missive from the very depths of what can only be described as a romantic abyss, a chasm so deep and echoing with loneliness that even my own sighs sound like mournful whale song. I am a man teetering on the precipice of… well, continued celibacy, unless your wisdom can illuminate a path through my particularly thorny thicket of filial piety and forbidden desires.

You see, I am a Chinese man, and I share my abode – nay, my very existence – with a creature of legend, a force of nature, the indomitable Tiger Mother. She is, in her own way, magnificent: a whirlwind of ambition (for me, primarily), discipline (again, for me), and a traditional conservatism so profound it makes ancient scrolls look like radical manifestos. Her love for me is undeniable, expressed primarily through relentless pressure to excel academically and professionally. Socializing? A frivolous distraction. Dating? Anathema, a siren song luring me away from the glorious shores of a PhD and a six-figure salary.

Every fiber of her being, every carefully chosen word, every disapproving glance when I so much as look at my phone for too long, screams “Study! Work! Succeed! Love is for later, much later, probably after you’ve cured a major disease and won a Nobel Prize, and even then, I’ll pick her.” Moving out, you ask? Ha! The very suggestion would likely cause her to spontaneously combust, or worse, unleash a lecture series on the sacred duty of a son that would span several lunar cycles. I am, for all intents and purposes, a well-educated, gainfully employed prisoner in a gilded cage of familial expectation.

And yet, a traitorous heart beats within this dutiful chest. It yearns! It longs! Not for grand, sweeping romance just yet (though one can dream, can’t one?), but for something… simpler. A coffee. A shared laugh. The flutter of nerves before a casual date. The simple, human experience of getting to know someone, perhaps even holding a hand without it immediately triggering a mental calculation of wedding banquet costs. I wish to date casually, to dip a toe into the waters of modern romance, to feel, for a fleeting moment, like a normal young man.

But here, my dear sage, is where my pathetic plight curdles into a truly Sisyphean comedy of errors. To pursue even the most innocent liaison, I must operate with the stealth and cunning of a covert operative. Every text message is a coded transmission, every potential outing a meticulously planned black-ops mission, conducted far from the all-seeing eye of my maternal warden.

And the women? Ah, the women! The ones I find myself drawn to, the ones who might understand the delicate cultural tightrope I walk, are often, by some cruel cosmic joke, in the exact same predicament. They too reside under the watchful gaze of their own Tiger Parents. And their parents, bless their traditional hearts, have a system. Oh, do they have a system. Before their precious daughters can even think about sharing a bubble tea with a suitor, said suitor (that’s me, in this tragicomedy) must undergo a rigorous parental approval process. This isn’t a casual meet-and-greet; it’s an interrogation, a background check, a dynastic compatibility assessment rolled into one terrifying tea ceremony.

And here’s the kicker, the real twist of the knife in my already bleeding romantic aspirations: if, by some miracle, I pass this parental gauntlet, if I am deemed “suitable,” the casual dating dream evaporates like morning mist. Parental approval automatically catapults the relationship into SERIOUS territory. We are now, by unspoken decree, monogamous. We are, by implicit understanding, on the slow but inexorable march towards marriage. There is no “let’s just see where this goes.” It goes towards a red envelope filled with wedding money, and quickly.

So, you see my dilemma? To date casually, I must deceive my mother. To date the women I’m interested in casually, I must also help them deceive their parents. We become co-conspirators in a multi-layered charade of clandestine coffee dates and whispered phone calls, all while pretending to our respective parental units that our social lives are as barren as the Gobi Desert. It’s exhausting! It’s unsustainable! It makes the very idea of a “casual date” feel like attempting to juggle flaming torches while riding a unicycle on a high wire, with both sets of parents holding the safety net hostage.

What am I to do? How does one navigate this minefield of maternal expectation and potential-in-law scrutiny, all for the sake of a simple, uncomplicated date? Is there a secret handshake for culturally-constricted Casanovas? Are there underground support groups?

My hope, a tiny, flickering ember in the vast darkness of my romantic despair, rests with you. Please, shed some light. Tell me there’s a way. Tell me I’m not doomed to a life of academic achievement and utter, soul-crushing loneliness, punctuated only by the occasional, terrifyingly high-stakes covert operation for a cup of tea.

With a heart heavy with unspent affection and a schedule full of secret plotting,

Yours in desperate hope,

Tiger Baby (and my ever-watchful mother, who probably already knows I’m writing this somehow).

DEAR TIGER BABY: Right, I guess we get to do this again. TB, I understand that you’re trying to be clever and expressive, but when your writing makes you sound like you’re trying to channel Oscar Wilde and Sephiroth, it ends up working against you. At best, the florid prose gets in the way of what you’re trying to actually ask and at worst it makes you come across as someone who thinks this is a substitute for having a personality.

I realize I’m the God-Emperor of “Why use one word when five will do”, but this ultimately ends up bloating your letter to the point where it gets hard to separate your actual issue from the rhetorical flourishes. You don’t need to be Hemingway, but you don’t need to be Abelard writing letters to Heloise either.

With that in mind: I actually had to read your letter multiple times because there’s a few important data points that I’m just not seeing here. The first is very simple: how old are you and the women you’re trying to date? Context clues would suggest that you’re at least over 18, which is makes you a legal adult in most countries, so your mother would hold little legal sway over your choices.

The second is: how much actual leverage does your mother have over you? I don’t mean parental disapproval or cultural pressure – we’ll get to that in a moment. I mean actual, significant means that she could use to ensure and enforce your obedience. From the sounds of things, you’re not in college and you’re employed full-time and you live at home. It doesn’t sound as though your mom is continuing to pay the tuition fees for your education or that you are contractually indebted to her in some way (inter-family loans to cover major purchases or tuition and so-on). From a strictly pragmatic perspective, unless you’ve left something relevant and important out, this is ultimately about emotional control, not financial. You’re not at risk of having to drop out of college or being homeless and destitute if you risk your mother’s displeasure.

So, assuming I’m correct about these, your mother has very little actual leverage over you. The biggest impediment to dating the way you would want to is, well, you.

Now, I get the social pressure and expectation. I’m a middle-aged white dude, so it’s easy for me to say “so what’s the problem,” especially since my personal view is that tradition is just peer pressure from dead people. I don’t have the same cultural upbringing, haven’t lived my life with that as being part of the ocean I swim in, and I’m not going to have the same reaction to that pressure. My advice should be taken with all appropriate amounts of salt with that in mind.

But while I may not grok the level of pressure and tradition you’re dealing with, I feel like (and hope that) I’m at least comprehending it. Socialization is a motherf--ker and it can be really hard to push back against social norms and expectations that you’ve been raised in all your life. Doubly so if you live in a community where everyone lives under similar expectations and there’s not just familial but societal pressure to conform. Breaking with those norms means risking social opprobrium and issues within your community. That s--t is hard to shake.

However, it is also all that’s standing between the life you want and the life you feel like you “have” to lead. You’re going to have to decide which is more important to you – having the freedom to date who you want, have the kinds of relationships you want to have and generally be in control of your own destiny – or acceding to your mother’s wishes.

So, you basically have three choices here. One is to keep your head down, play the dutiful son and wait until your mom passes away so that you can finally live how you want. The second is to try to date the way that Cold War era spies used to have to sneak in and out of East Berlin to see their contacts and cut-outs. The third is to stop fearing parental disapproval and make your mother fear your disapproval.

Now, are there ways you could date on the down-low? Sure… as long as you don’t mind having to be relentlessly paranoid while also relying on third parties to help run cover for you. You and your dates could communicate exclusively on Signal or apps that automatically delete messages after reading them. Seeing as your mother has full access to your phone, you’d have to use the Android or iOS “Hide App” feature to keep her off your back. You’d also need confederates to help at least create the illusion of group outings with friends that would allow you to sneak away and meet up with your sweetie and hope that your friends are good at keeping their stories straight. You also have to hope that anyone you date, even casually, is equally as conscious and dedicated to their privacy and security, as are your (and their) co-conspirators. As Leverage has taught us again and again: people are the weak point in every security system. The more people involved in the conspiracy, the less secret it becomes and the more likely it’ll be revealed.

But hey, at least then you could see just how long your relationships could last under the strain of never knowing who you can trust with your secrets and who is likely to blab – deliberately or by accident or through poor social op-sec – and never being comfortable being seen in public with your snugglebunny in case someone spots you together and word gets back anyway.

(You may want to ask some queer friends with homophobic or transphobic parents how much ‘fun’ that can be, incidentally. Especially now that the US government is ready to shove every LGBTQ+ person back into the closet or else.)

Or you can decide that you’re a grown-ass adult and while the lectures may be excoriating and the disapproval can sting… you don’t actually have to listen. To quote Da Share Zone: just walk out. You can leave. You can, in fact, not wait for the lecture to finish. You are able to turn on your heel in mid-sentence and walk away, hang up the phone without waiting for her to so much as pause for breath or otherwise not give her any more of your time and attention in this matter than you want. Will she combust and yell about the sting of an ungrateful child? OK… and? A temper tantrum for not getting one’s way is still a temper tantrum, even when the person throwing it is in their 40s, 50s or older, and you don’t reward a temper tantrum by giving the person what they want.

Will it suck for a bit? Sure. You love your mother, even if she’s a major pain in your ass and living barricade to your social life. Her blowing up at you and being both hurt and angry are going to sting, possibly quite a lot. You don’t want to disappoint her or hurt her and that’s entirely understandable.��But the point of being a parent is to one day stop being a parent. There comes a point where the kids are going to leave home and live their own lives; it’s just a matter of when and under what circumstances. What your mom’s doing is continuing to treat you as a child, regardless of your age. Even when it’s coming from a place of wanting what she thinks is the best for you and wanting you to succeed, it’s still stifling.

Your presence in her life is optional and conditional, and you are the only person who gets to decide what those conditions are. You can make it clear that while you love her and care for her, you’re not going to be present as long as she treats you like a child or a project to manage. She can treat you like an adult or she can kick rocks. And “I’ll treat you like an adult when you act like one” or similar statements puts her squarely in “kick rocks” territory.

And to be clear: it’s entirely possible that this will mean not seeing your mother for a long time. There’re folks who could medal in grudge-holding for the Olympics. They’re ones who have resolved that they’ll heal in Hell. But there is a point in every estranged parent’s life where they have to decide whether they love their kids more than they want to hold onto whatever moral victory they think they have. They may never admit that they were wrong… but they can at least bend enough to put it aside in the name of actually having a relationship with their children. Hopefully, if you take this route, your mother would be one of those, and who would get there sooner rather than later.

But like I said: it’s ultimately going to come down to choices. And yes, those choices will have consequences; every choice does. You just have to decide whether those potential consequences and what they bring with them are a price you’re willing to pay.

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 went to PAX recently and wanted to see if I could make some approaches while I was there. I went with some friends too to ease the tension but it just made it worse. I was so self-conscious they would judge me for trying to talk to someone. The one person I did talk to and politely asked for a picture with her (cosplayer) said yes very reluctantly and gave me a “f--k off” look after it was over. All I asked for was a picture and walked away. That threw me off for the rest of my time there.

It seemed to me like everyone didn’t really want to meet people and just wanted to stay in their own group and enjoy PAX privately. I felt like I would be a massive creep just walking up to someone and trying to start friendly conversation. I thought Cons were supposed to be great places to meet people but now I’m not so sure. I still enjoyed PAX and got lots of merch there and chilled with friends but I failed my secondary objective hard.

I know I have approach anxiety but I don’t know if I was reading the room wrong or if things really were as they looked. Was I just not trying hard enough? I’m so scared of making someone uncomfortable and after the cosplayer gave me that death glare it really made me feel s--t. I’m spiraling so hard right now and feel like hope and time for me is running out. I don’t want to feel like everyone I try to connect with just doesn’t want me and I’m gonna end up alone forever.

Cliqued Out

DEAR CLIQUED OUT: Right off the bat CO: you were coming to the con already afraid of being judged for trying to talk to people. That’s setting yourself up for failure, because you’re priming yourself to see judgement and disdain in every gesture, tone of voice or involuntary flutter of someone’s lower eyelid. Going into any interaction with someone, platonic or otherwise, where you are pre-emptively apologizing for bothering them or just existing is going to be awkward at best. Even if they do like you or are, at worst, neutral, you’re more likely to take off like a feral cat that’s afraid to let people touch it than you are to make a friend or potential love connection.

Considering that you were already coming in a defensive crouch of apologies and pre-rejection, it also means you may not be the most reliable narrator as to what happened. Are you sure that you got a “f--k off” reaction from the cosplayer, or is that how your brain is playing it after the fact? Was it unmistakable, something that your friends saw and said “woah, that was harsh?” Or was this entirely your own subjective read on it? Is it possible that you’re reading your own anxieties into this?

(I should point out that this could also be massively dependent on context or circumstance. If the cosplayer were chatting with friends, they might be a little annoyed at the interruption. If it were at the end of the day, or they were going around the dealer’s room or trying to get into some panels, they may not have been in performance mode, and sometimes it can be hard or draining to shift gears in a moment’s notice.)

But let me actually reassure you about one thing, CO: you’re not the only person who felt like folks were very walled off and not open to schmoozing and socializing.

By sheer coincidence, a friend of mine, who’s a fairly social and gregarious person, was also at PAX this weekend and found that trying to drag conversation out of people was like pulling teeth. A lot of people seemed to be very resolute in just talking to a small group of people, and that was it.

At least at first. More on this in a second.

This isn’t entirely surprising. The chaos of this year has been a lot and all of the uncertainty around things like Trump’s Magic Tariffs have created an atmosphere where everyone is waiting for the next shoe to drop. How much more will people have to pay for games? Will it be at all possible to get video cards or monitors or laptops for less than an arm and also your first-born child? Will the Switch 2 even be available in America? That’s going to set a certain tone, even among the most enthusiastic gaming fans.

Just as importantly, a lot of folks who go to PAX are in the games industry to one degree or another and this has been an epically s--t year for them. Between wave after wave after wave of layoffs, games being canceled, studios being shut down even after shipping wildly successful games, and beloved media outlets being bought by venture capital firms and turned into content slop farms, I’m mostly surprised that the entire convention didn’t have that thousand-yard stare that only front-line military veterans get, quietly drinking beers and wondering when the screaming will stop.

BUT! As my friend reported to me: as the night went on, people actually started to unclench and open up. Some folks went to bed, others loosened up and were more open to talking with new people, and I’m sure the Bar Con aspect meant that people relaxed as the booze provided some social lubricant.

What this should tell you is that a lot of times, that sense of “nobody wants to talk to me” isn’t personal, it’s circumstantial. It’s often as much about timing as it is about anything else, and you can’t control for what’s going on in other people’s lives. Many times, people’s responses have absolutely nothing to do with you and everything to do with their own bulls--t. This is one of the reasons why I always emphasize the wisdom of one J. Picard: it’s possible to make no mistakes and still lose. That’s not a sign that everyone hates you, it’s just circumstance. Sometimes you really do need to just give it a little time and see how things are a bit later in the day or evening, especially at cons.

(And in particular, the times when folks are going to be at their least social tend to be around 1 PM and right when the con floor closes; everyone’s tired, some folks are people’d out and need to get away from the crowds to recharge and a whole lot of people are feeling their blood sugar crash and need to get food. Small wonder the energy after hours tends to pick back up around 9 PM)

However, if this has put you on an actual spiral and not talking to people at the con is leading to a crisis, then you may have an issue with social anxiety that goes into an actual disorder. It may be worth your time to talk to your doctor about anti-anxiety medications to help ease your nerves so that the slightest sense of “failure” – especially when there is no actual failure here – is going to make you crash out.

But in this case, CO, you can take some comfort in knowing that it absolutely wasn’t just you; lots of people were having the same sort of experience and feeling like everyone was giving them the cold shoulder.     

Good luck.

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