DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: As a single man, how do I get past the idea that we are disliked and of low social value? I’m getting constant reinforcement of the idea that my presence as single man is unwanted and single men generally offer nothing of value.

For example:

– the term ‘sausage fest’ has negative connotations – whilst female-majority social events have a positive perception

– dating apps are 70-75% men – leaving women as the choosers whilst men fight over scraps

– men are often not even allowed into popular bars and clubs without female company – whilst women are often rushed to the front of the line and invited in because they add value to the venue

– many meetup.com events seem to be 75% male – whilst women often host “women only” events so that they can make friends with each other without men annoying them

Everything I see makes single women feel like a sought-after commodity but single men are like annoying flies buzzing around them.

How can I rid myself of this mindset, or do I have to accept that it is true and that I have no choice but to try and overcome this disadvantage?

Solitary And Disposable

DEAR SOLITARY AND DISPOSABLE: Well, I guess I should be glad that this isn’t more complaining about “d--k is abundant and of low value…”

There’s a word here that’s vitally important, SAD – one that will explain precisely what all of these examples are actually talking about and which will hopefully help you recognize the problem with your mindset and how to overcome it.

And that word is “context”.

Taken entirely by themselves, these statements and examples seem pretty bad! It’s not that hard to see how you could see this as being a commentary on the social and societal value of men, especially single men. But the issue here is that you’re missing the actual context in which all of these statements are made or these examples occur. None of them happen in a vacuum after all, and the context surrounding them explains quite a bit.

At least, if you’re not starting from a place where you’re describing how you feel about yourself and aren’t working backwards from there in order to justify it and “prove” its validity – a cognitive bias known as “confirmation bias”.

One example of an important lack of context is that the examples you mention all involve men who sleep with women; gay men aren’t having the same experiences you describe. In fact, that context is pretty important to all of your examples, so let’s keep that in mind as we go through them.

Let’s start from the top: why is a “sausage party” (an event where the majority of attendees, if not all of them, are men) bad, but an event where the majority or total of attendees are women is good? Well, this is where context comes in. And in this case, the context is that the person referring to a “sausage party” or “sausage fest” is complaining that there are no or very few women at the party for them to flirt with or hit on. In other words: it’s “bad” because the person who’s calling the event a “sausage party” is upset that they don’t have a plethora of people they want to f--k, who might be willing to f--k them.

This is where context makes a difference. If, for example, you were hosting a birthday party or some other event where you invited your close friends, and most – if not all – of your close friends happen to be male, you would hardly be complaining about it being a sausage party. After all, you’re getting precisely what you wanted: to celebrate with your friends. Similarly, a gay or bisexual man at an event that’s mostly full of other men isn’t going to be axiomatically seeing this as a bad thing.

(Also, a similar situation of lots of straight women hoping to flirt with guys and no available men would be called a clam shack.)

Other examples, however, are matters of commerce and capitalism. Men are allowed into clubs (with certain exceptions, which I will get to in a second) without female accompaniment. However, it’s often easier to get into clubs or skip the line if you (the hypothetical male in this scenario) are bringing women with you. 

Why? Simple: if there’re very few women in the club, men tend to not stay as long, which means they aren’t buying drinks or otherwise spending money. And if the club develops a reputation for being the aforementioned “sausage party”, then more people will stay away, causing further financial harm to the club. The club is, after all, a business, and like many businesses in the hospitality and entertainment industry, they tend to run on razor-thin margins. A club that has an abundant female clientele most nights is a club that’s going to have a lot more people who want to come and drink, dance and have a good time. So, it’s in the club’s financial interest to encourage women to come – by having reduced door fees, offering discounted drink prices to women on certain nights and other inducements.

Now, there are clubs where men aren’t allowed in without being accompanied by at least one woman: sex clubs and swingers parties. This is, once again, a matter of capitalism and – more importantly – a matter of comfort and feeling of safety. People, including straight, single men, are coming to sex clubs for sexual activity. If there are few women at the party, there are far fewer opportunities for men to have sex. This means men stop attending.

More importantly, however, when there are lots of men and only a small number of women in a sexually charged environment, the women are not going to feel as safe and secure as they would in a similar environment where there are equal numbers of men and women or more women than men. If women don’t feel safe attending those clubs or parties or they feel like they’re going to get harassed (or worse) by the hornt up male attendees, women are going to stop coming at all and the parties and clubs die.

The dating apps and MeetUp groups you mention, however, have a related – but slightly different – angle.

A part of the reason why there are more men than women on dating apps, for example, is because men tend to be earlier adopters of tech and gadgets, including computers, the Internet and smartphones. This is a sociological and somewhat cyclical phenomenon (tech advertises to men more than to women because of the perception that men are earlier adopters than women, so men tend to be more likely to adopt tech earlier, which causes tech to advertise to men more often and so on…) that began in no small part because companies made the conscious choice to target male audiences as their primary market. We saw this in the games industry starting in the late 80s, for example.

However, another, more important aspect that gets overlooked whenever these complaints crop up, is that women tend to join dating apps and then leave soon after. Why? Because of the experiences they have when they sign in – they’re bombarded with low-effort messages from people who are shotgunning their attention in order to maximize opportunities, insulted and harassed by others and generally have horrible experiences. Part of the raison d’être of Bumble was, in part, to make a space where women were less likely to have a horrific experience while trying to find a date.

It hasn’t worked, but that was the whole point of Bumble.

The same goes for MeetUps – as well as yoga classes, dance classes and other events; there are a large number of men who show up and treat the event like a sex ATM. Yoga or learning how to samba or even just meeting fellow LEGO aficionados isn’t as fun when there are dudes who are cruising the event like horny sharks, hitting on everyone like they’re in the club and generally ruining the vibe. It’s hard to enjoy your yoga practice when some dudebro is clearly only there to try to pick up chicks and won’t stop ogling women in their workout clothes or making obvious and very tired jokes about downward dog or cat pose or salutes to the sun.

It’s the same as why Japan instituted “women only” cars on their subways – because sexual harassment, groping, taking non-consensual photos of women and so on were becoming an epidemic.

Now, if you’re paying attention, you may notice an important pattern here: the reason for pretty much all of these involves male behavior around women. This isn’t a case of single men being seen as being socially worth less, it’s a case of a whole lotta dudes who don’t know how to act right f--king up the party for everyone else. You’re correct in that single women are treated by men like a precious commodity – with the emphasis on commodity. As in “things to be consumed”, rather than as people. And, not surprisingly, women don’t appreciate being viewed this way – by anyone in general, but especially by people who are supposedly interested in dating them.

I mean, dude. You refer to the women on dating apps who haven’t found a partner and left the site as scraps. As in left over food, the remains that other people didn’t want or didn’t finish. I understand you were going for a particular turn of phrase to describe the feeling but do you see how that’s a part of the problem?

All the things that you describe as being signs of men (because it’s not just single men that do this) being worthless are the result of said men acting aggressively and often inappropriately towards women, and women not appreciating being treated this way. Women, not unreasonably preferring not to have to navigate a gauntlet of guys who act like d--kbags, will end up prioritizing events and environments that actively discourage this sort of behavior, and may well prefer to attend some events where this sort of behavior is impossible simply because there aren’t any men.

This is about men, in as much as that it’s male behavior that is the source of so many of these attitudes and outcomes, and it’s this sort of male behavior that makes people feel uncomfortable enough to have to compensate for it. It has nothing to do with being single – again, because this sort of behavior isn’t limited to single men – and it has nothing to do with relative social value compared to women.

Except, that is, in as much in how men view women versus how they view men. Such as the idea that a party or event full of men getting described in derogatory terms by other men.

Now, maybe you’re not like one of the guys who act like this and create the environments that make women feel unsafe and unwelcome… poor choice of words aside. And if so, then great! You should keep on being someone who doesn’t act like that. But that doesn’t change the fact that lots of guys do act like this and encourage other men to act like this, despite the fact that it actively harms everyone involved – women and men alike. This is precisely why that sort of behavior among men is called “toxic masculinity”; it’s not that being a man is inherently toxic, it’s these are behaviors and attitudes in men or are coded as being masculine that cause demonstrable harm to individuals and society as a whole.

Just as importantly, however, is that you don’t seem to have noticed precisely who it is that encourages single men to feel bad for being single – and it isn’t women. Women aren’t going around telling men they’re losers for being virgins or for not having girlfriends or not having had enough sex. That’s primarily coming from other men. It’s part and parcel of how men are encouraged to treat one another – to treat other men as competition, to enhance their own social status at the expense of others and to reinforce these sorts of behaviors by punishing people who deviate from them. This is how “simp”, for example, went from describing someone who debases themselves for the sake of someone who doesn’t know or care about them, to mean a guy who doesn’t act like a hormonal d--k monster to women, why “cuck” gets tossed around at other men like beads from a Mardi Gras float and why “bitch” refers to supposedly “weak” or “effeminate” men.  

And to forestall the inevitable and obvious: yes, there’re women who will do this. Women are capable of perpetuating toxic ideas about manhood, male values and male behavior. They are, however, dwarfed by orders of magnitude by men and are following men’s lead in this.

The problem here is that you’re treating this as something being done to you, rather than being the result of a societal encouragement of behaviors that end up causing problems for everyone. This is taking how you feel about being single – that being single says anything about you in and of itself beyond “isn’t currently in a relationship” – and externalizing it and justifying it with incredibly shallow reasoning that doesn’t stand up under basic scrutiny.

So my advice for learning to let go of this mindset is to start recognizing it for what it is – how you feel about yourself – and work outwards from there. Part of it is going to be to learn to love your life and to embrace your inherent value instead of seeing it as being contingent on other people.

Another part is going to be to stop listening to people who tell you that being single is a mark of anything outside of “I’m not currently in a relationship”. People can be single because they’re s--tty people, sure. People can also be single by choice, because their partner died, because they’re not in a position to date anyone, because they have other priorities or even because of pure bad luck. People who encourage you to see yourself as being worth less based on whether you’re dating someone are people who want you to feel this way – often because it benefits them in some way or they’re trying to leverage your feelings as a way of selling you things.  

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: This keeps happening and I genuinely don’t understand what I’m doing wrong.

I tend to click with women who are sweet but haven’t had a lot of attention. They’re usually a little insecure, maybe on the heavier side, maybe not used to someone actually showing up for them. I make them feel good about themselves — I notice things about them that most people overlook. I put in effort, I give them compliments, I listen, I make them feel wanted.

They always respond so strongly to that. They light up. They open up. They tell me I make them feel seen. And I like that connection at first. It’s intense, but in a good way. We’ll spend time together, hook up, talk late into the night. But after a while, it shifts. They start needing more from me—texts all day, constant reassurance, deeper conversations I’m not always in the mood for. I start feeling boxed in.

By that point, I’m usually losing interest anyway. Sometimes I meet someone new, someone fresh, more exciting. And yeah, I’ll act on that. I usually break things off with full transparency.

What I don’t get is why it always becomes this huge betrayal. I never told them we were exclusive. I didn’t make promises. I just treated them well and connected with them, and now I’m being accused of leading them on or using them. They’ll say I made them feel special “just to take it away,” or that I “knew what I was doing,” like I had some evil plan. All I did was lose interest and move on.

When I try to explain, I get accused of being manipulative. I am always honest about what I want and let them know that they’re projecting things on to me that I have never agreed to. But they always twist that into me “messing with their heads” or “blaming them for being hurt.” One even said I made her feel crazy for having feelings, which — how is that my fault?

I don’t yell. I don’t lie. I just try to be calm and remind them what we actually said to each other. But somehow I end up being the villain because I didn’t feel the same intensity forever.

At this point I’m wondering—is there something about the kind of women I’m drawn to that makes this a pattern? Or is this just how dating works now? It feels like if you give someone a little kindness, suddenly you owe them everything.

Would appreciate your take.

— Always the Bad Guy

DEAR ALWAYS THE BAD GUY: Normally with a letter like this, I’d be more inclined to say “if you’re looking to be slapped around, hire a dominatrix” but hey, these deadlines won’t meet themselves.

And then I got to that last sentence. So, I guess it’s time to acquaint you to my good friend, The Chair Leg of Truth.

This isn’t a problem of you being an innocent bystander catching strays or women taking out their issues and excessively high expectations on you, super chief. This is entirely you’re doing.

The actual problem is glaringly obvious, ATBG. This isn’t one thing so much as a cascading series of choices that keep leading to the same place. And despite how you try to frame it, it’s one that is entirely your doing. This ain’t a case of “man, these chicks are so unreasonable”, it’s you pulling s--t over and over again and then wondering why people think you’re being an asshat.

As the saying goes: if one person calls you a horse, you’ve met a crazy person. If ten people call you a horse, you better check yourself for a saddle and bridle. And hey guess what…

None of this is accidental, and it’s very clear that it’s not. We’ll start with the fact that you know that this is a pattern you repeat over and over again – same behaviors, same people, same outcome. It’s the old – if inaccurate – saw about the definition of “insanity” being “doing the same thing and expecting a different result”.

Well, you keep indulging in the behavior and acting perplexed why it happens every time. Hmm who knows, maybe it keeps happening because you keep doing the same things to very similar people. How bizarre. How strange. How utterly unexpected.

If you know enough to know that if this is an actual problem, then maybe you should stop doing these things, especially if it leads to people being hurt and upset at you. Except that would require actually having some empathy instead of being irritated that they’re mad at you for doing the thing that keeps getting people mad at you.

Now, were this a series of innocent mistakes and misunderstandings, then much of this could be avoided if you took steps at the start. There’s nothing inherently wrong with a relationship style where you prioritize a series of short-term connections. Some folks are simply wired to need a lot of novelty, whose relationships tend to be frequent and intense but brief and whose interest fades fairly quickly over time. But it becomes a problem when you know this about yourself and yet you don’t make it clear to the people you meet that this is how you work and what you have to offer. Telling them up front that “hey, I can only do short-term” or “this is only going to be a fling” allows them to make the informed decision as to whether that’s something they are down for or not.

Of course, there will always be people who hear that and either ignore it or think that they can change your mind. You can’t control for that, unfortunately; they’re setting themselves up for heartbreak because they don’t want to acknowledge that they chose to ignore the warnings.

(Ask me how I know. Go on, ask me.)

Not telling them and/or allowing them to think there could be more, on the other hand, is s--tty, and no amount of “well I didn’t say…” isn’t going to excuse it. Yeah, I talk about “don’t assume you’re exclusive if you haven’t had the exclusivity talk”, but this isn’t a universally observed rule. Things would be a lot easier if it were, but we ain’t there yet, and playing it off as though it were is disingenuous. And more to the point, if you know or have reason to suspect that someone is starting to think you’re exclusive, or is acting like you are, then relying on “well I didn’t say we were an item,” doesn’t serve as a “get out of blame free” card.

Seeing as you can recognize this pattern, you understand precisely what’s happening and why. Shockingly, people don’t appreciate being told they haven’t been led on simply because they didn’t double check the fine print of a contract they didn’t know they were signing.

Next is the fact that you recognize that this keeps happening with the same “type” of people – people who are particularly vulnerable to someone being caring and attentive and acting like they want a relationship. It’s not an accident that it’s always this particular combination of traits, and the fact that you acknowledge it means that you know damn good and well what you’re doing. It’s not a wacky coincidence that keeps happening, you’re targeting them. This isn’t – as your passive-voice indicates – something that just happens. It’s not “you tend to click”, it’s that you’re doing this to people who will respond to this particular behavior, and reward you with the attention and sexy times you want.��Or did you think folks were going to see “chubby chicks with self-esteem issues” and just assume that they were getting too hung up on a guy they should think of as out of their league?

This is then followed by “I treat them in ways men don’t normally treat them – like I’m actually interested in them as people and potential romantic partners.” Well congratulations for acting like someone who’s actually attracted to them and wants to date them instead of using them for sex and a self-esteem boost, humanitarian of the year, you are. It’s so unreasonable that they think you’re leading them on.

Oh, except for this part: “We’ll spend time together, hook up, talk late into the night. But after a while, it shifts. They start needing more from me—texts all day, constant reassurance, deeper conversations I’m not always in the mood for. I start feeling boxed in.”

OK, so you’re feeling boxed in because they’re expecting you to continue behaving in the manner that you started behaving? How f--king unreasonable of them. I mean, how dare these women think you might actually like them and want to date them when you have been acting like you like them and want to date them.

One of the things I talk about when I talk about how to maintain a casual relationship is to avoid treating it like a romantic relationship, especially if it’s primarily about casual sex. This means not sending signs that you’re interested in more by not acting like you’re interested in more. You don’t need to get up and wipe your dick on the curtains and bounce as soon as you get off, but having those long talks into the night and all that time spent together? Yeah, you’re giving every indication that you’re interested in something less casual and more connected and then slapping them down when they respond to that.

Now could all this be avoided? Well of course. This keeps happening after all and you clearly have enough pattern recognition to complain about it. You could start by not giving them the full court press at the start, which sets up the situation. You also know that you could be having conversations much earlier, checking in to say “hey, I get the feeling that maybe you and I are seeing this differently, and I just want to make sure we’re on the same page about what this relationship is.” Except you don’t. Not until you, as you put it, are getting bored and are ready to find someone new, not before.  

Why is that, I wonder? Because if you didn’t play it this way, allowing them to think that there’s more than there actually is, they wouldn’t sleep with you? They’d pass on casual sex in favor of finding a committed relationship with someone else?  

It’s at this point where you’re playing the game of “letter of the law, but not the spirit”. Breaking things off “with full transparency” isn’t you being honorable or kind, nor honest. Full transparency involves being transparent from the start, not waiting until you’re done and saying “Look, I’m bored here, this was never serious for me and I’m just gonna go f--k someone else now, toodles!” And while yes, you didn’t make promises, you just behaved in ways that strongly imply that you feel a certain way and allow them to work under the assumption that this is how you feel.

It’s one thing if you realize that you made a mistake by acting in such a way that another person made a reasonable inference and you didn’t catch it until it was too late. It’s a s--tty thing to do, but it’s a mistake made out of ignorance and misunderstanding, and one that a lot of folks make. But it’s a mistake that most folks – people who genuinely feel bad about having hurt someone like this – make once.

It’s another when this keeps mysteriously happening, involving the same behavior with similar people, all of whom seem to respond with the same degree of hurt and betrayal. That’s when it starts looking deliberate and targeted.

To not recognize that this isn’t just a bunch of stage-4 clingers that you keep accidentally seducing requires a level of profound and deliberate ignorance. And quite frankly that’s what makes it very hard for me to buy that you have enough awareness to see all the other aspects of this but somehow this is your sole blind spot.

They’re acting hurt and betrayed because you were acting like someone who was genuinely interested in them. You were giving them care, attention and validation, spending time on dates and having those long, deep, involved conversations and then getting upset that they took that as a sign that you were dating. You allowed them to believe this, never correcting them or – if need be – ending the relationship sooner because they were getting too invested, and you rely on the fig leaf of “well, technically,” as if that made it better.

It’s weird how getting all legalistic and pedantic doesn’t make someone feel better, huh?

And again, don’t think I don’t note the “subtle” hints of “I am being calm and rational, unlike these clingy, unreasonable, emotional dames, so clearly it’s not me.”

The problem isn’t that you lost interest. That happens, faster to some than others. The people who know this about themselves, who don’t want to hurt others, lead with this, so that folks know what they’re getting into.

Nor is the problem that you didn’t maintain the “same level of intensity, forever”. Nobody’s expecting that. The problem is that you used them. You act in a way that leads people to believe one way, to people who you say are vulnerable to this behavior, and then try to disregard your own responsibility in the matter by trying to hide behind technicalities and hoping that people are going to buy into the idea that women are just overly emotional and chubby chicks get too clingy.

You want to break this pattern? Start by being honest from the jump. You haven’t been with them and you haven’t been with me.

Because yeah, you’re the one being the asshole here. That’s entirely on you.

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 (M28) am writing because I have a lot of trouble about moving on from my last (and only) relationship with a girl I’ll call Leila (F28). We were together for about five years, and after that we got back together for a few months. We have a child together.

I have always been the very quiet, recluse kid at school. Not many friends, but I didn’t care as I spent all my free time playing video games. In college, I did my best to get out of my shell, and I mostly succeeded: I got into partying, meeting people, and I met a lot of people whom I’m still friends with today.

Now, I was not really getting there with romantic and sexual relationships. While I did get some interest from other women from time to time, I never found them to my liking. Of course, I never approached girls I thought were cute.

It was the same when I met Leila: she was interested in me, but I wasn’t at first. But see, I knew she was attractive, just not my particular flavor. She made heads turn at the bar. She was very experienced sexually. And she was hitting on me really hard. She quickly grew on me and we quickly started hooking up. She was my first sexual partner (not counting a hookup I once had with a girl I didn’t want).

Now you can’t imagine what effect this had on my ego. The “unattractive loser” was having sex with a hot girl, and everyone knew it. I felt like a million bucks, and that had never happened to me before. Actually, the well-being of my ego entirely depended on the fact that Leila wanted to hook up with ME specifically — and more than that even: she was in love with me. I liked her a lot but I can’t say I was “in love”.

I was fine with being sexfriends, and I told her so, but eventually I gave in and we started “dating”, and we quickly moved in together. We got on very well, had lots of shared interests, we had good sex. Her libido was lower than mine, which frustrated me a bit but it was still okay.

Through the years, things dwindled. She made a lot of effort to maintain the relationship, and did a lot for me. But her libido lowered a lot. I was increasingly distant and frustrated with her. I didn’t feel attached to her at all anymore. I wanted to go out there and get my own relationships, go see “hot girls” and hook up with them, meet a girl I “really love” to date her. So I ended things one year ago and moved out.

Leila was devastated, but I was finally free. Free to pursue whatever I wanted in terms of relationships. I was fine being alone, and was not looking for another relationship for the moment. Only, what I didn’t know is that my whole sense of self-worth still rested on Leila’s love for me, so when I learned that she had hooked up with multiple people since we split (and I — zero), I literally felt my soul leaving my body.

Enter anxiety and depression. I had never felt so bad in my life. If she forgot me, I thought, I would have nothing for me anymore. I was ferociously jealous that she could get anyone she wanted, because she was that good, and I… just couldn’t. I was jealous of her partners too – obviously. And she really did almost everything I could have ever hoped to do or discover in my sexual life during our breakup, including things she didn’t do with me, which killed me a little more.

Yet, I tried the apps. I ended up getting some dates (no sex), multiple dates with the same girls even, including one I met during a night out. This was all a first for me and I’m still surprised I pulled it off. But really, I was only thinking about Leila. I felt like these girls I met just didn’t measure up to her. So when Leila and I met later that year, and she told me she still loved me, we ended up having sex and got back together shortly after. And the old feelings came back: I was frustrated, distant, dismissive of her needs because I had seen no progress whatsoever in my own relationship goals during the breakup. We split up again.

Now, she found someone else very quickly, again. I fear that she found a more serious prospect than the previous people she saw. I tell myself every day that I could get her back, and end the constant anxiety, loneliness and frustration. It’s just a phone call away. Only, I don’t know how much time is left before she won’t take me back. And I’m scared to see this day come.

Of course, this is not healthy. I believe I need to put an end to this relationship, for good, but we cannot go no-contact because of our child. We have both sent messages that we shouldn’t have, still recently.

Doc, how the hell am I supposed to build my self-worth on my own? How do I know I’m not letting the best girl I’ll ever meet go, while she would spend the rest of her life with me?

What if I’m only leaving her for the frustration of not having had any other sexual experiences, only to understand after a few years that our life together was actually nice enough and our problems were all (well, mostly) in my head? I do fear I am making a huge mistake here.

Sorry for the long one, and thanks a lot for reading. Love your blog, your energy and your outlook: you’re one of the good ones. Keep up the good work.

Hollow Night

DEAR HOLLOW NIGHT: This is a s--tty situation to be in and you have my sympathy. Which is why I hate to say this HN, because it’s going to sound like I’m giving you s--t when I’m not, but… this is precisely why I talk about external vs. internal validation and why it’s important to love yourself. It’s also why confidence and self-esteem isn’t inherent to achievements or other people – because that means your sense of self and self-worth is something that can be taken away from you.

Without the foundation of feeling your own value, believing in your own worth, independent of who you’re seeing or sleeping with… well, you end up with situations like this. And it absolutely sucks. It hurts, and it makes it hard to move forward, simply because you’re more focused on what someone else is doing rather than working on your own healing and making your own closure.

This is something that a lot of guys go through, especially guys who define themselves as hopeless or losers or otherwise have made being “bad with girls” part of their identity and self-concept. They find the “perfect” person, someone who they can point to and say “Look, she finds me hot! She’s someone other people want, now she’s with me! Look what that says about me!” And for a brief period, it feels like you’re the center of the universe. You’ve gone from being the guy that folks pitied, if they didn’t sneer at you, to being the guy that everyone envies. You go outside and it feels like you’re starring in a musical full of song and dance numbers about how great you are while God smiles down directly on you.

And then your “perfect” partner turns out to be human, the same as everyone else. The little imperfections and flaws that everyone has become more prominent in your view, the little annoyances that you could overlook early on stop being so little. And, just as importantly… well, you start thinking that “ok, well, maybe I could do a little better than this. Maybe I could find someone who’s even better, someone who can make me feel like I did when we first started, but without the things that are bugging me.”

Maybe you end things, maybe the relationship has reached the point where she does; either way, you are now single – like you wanted to be! The world is your oyster! You’re ready to move on to the next level with the next, even better partner…

Except you don’t. You struggle. You have a hard time meeting people, especially folks who are on the same theoretical “level” as your ex. The confidence you had has vanished, and all those obstacles and challenges you thought had been erased by being with her never actually went away, and you’re exactly where you were before.

Meanwhile, she’s not had the same problem. She’s seeing other people, while Friday night is the loneliest night for you. And you can’t help but feel like maybe the answer is to get her back, so you can feel the way you did before.

Now, to be clear: being frustrated about a mismatched libido is understandable, especially if sex and sexual intimacy is a priority for you in a relationship. Sexual compatibility is vitally important for a relationship’s long-term success. But it also sounds like there wasn’t as much there besides the sex. You say it yourself: you weren’t dating her because you loved her, you were moving from being f--kbuddies to dating because she wanted something more serious and you “gave in”. Which was, honestly, a mistake. An understandable one, but a mistake none the less. Because when the sex went from being new and novel to not just what you were accustomed to, but not as frequent or regular as at the start, there was less in the relationship to help bridge the gap.

So, you basically ended up doubly screwed. You were in a relationship that didn’t meet your needs, with someone who you liked, but didn’t have that vital connection to, and you didn’t have the foundation of self-worth and value and esteem that would make it easier to move on, give yourself closure, take what you learned and apply it to a new relationship. You had the illusion of confidence, not the reality of it, and it vanished because it was based entirely on someone else.

So, I’m going to say this as gently as I can: this happened because at the end of the day, this relationship was all about you and how being with her meant that you were special. It’s a little like the scene in 500 Days of Summer, where Summer is saying something significant and vulnerable to Tom, something that she has never said to anyone else, and Tom misses it entirely. He knows she’s talking, but he’s not paying attention; he’s thinking about what her opening up to him this way says about him.

And, to be frank, it’s still happening. You haven’t moved on because you haven’t learned the lesson here. Even your despair at how many guys she’s been with in comparison to your none is due to having not fully understood why this relationship hasn’t and won’t work. I hate to tell you this but if you get back with her again, you’re going to have the same frustrations, feel the same lack of affection and care and you’re going to break up a third time, because nothing has changed. You haven’t learned the lesson you need to learn, so you’re stuck in the same patterns, which will just repeat itself again. And then, all that’s going to happen is that you will have broken the heart of someone who seems to genuinely care for you three separate times.

You miss Leila because of what she represents, not because of her. You miss how she made you feel about yourself. You miss being the guy that could get someone this hot, this sexual, someone who made you the envy of others. But that’s all about you, using her as the base for your sense of self-worth and confidence.

You have to let go of that and learn to find it in yourself. This is why confidence is built by believing in your own ability to improve and grow and accomplish, not by “success” and not by who you’re with. It’s built around knowing that you may not succeed this time, but failure isn’t going to stop you, either. And it’s built around knowing that, even when nobody else believes in you, your faith in yourself is strong.

This is why I say that loving yourself is so important. Why your sense of self-worth has to be inherent to you, not reliant on external validation. Otherwise, you end up in situations just like this, feeling lost and confused and often causing pain in others without meaning to or even understanding why or how you’re doing so.

Leila isn’t the best woman you will ever meet, HN. She’s the one that made you feel a particular way. That relationship was mostly about you and it still is. You have only ever felt this need for her after you leave her, not while you’re with her. It’s about filling the vacuum in your sense of self that you notice when she’s gone. And until you do fill it for yourself, you’re going to have the same problems – chasing after someone you don’t actually want for her own sake, while not being able to move on and meet someone who you might actually care about and build a relationship with.

I know this sounds harsh, but this is the way forward for you. You have to recon with the truth of your connection to her, even though it makes you look bad and makes you feel bad about yourself. It’s the lesson you have been needing to learn before now, but made all the more bitter because this is the second go-round, second verse same as the first, a little bit louder and a whole lot worse.

You’re going to have to build your confidence and self-worth without her, find the things that make you feel good about yourself by yourself. You’re going to have to teach yourself to do the things that not only feed your soul but nourish your sense of self, instead of relying on someone else that you can point to and say “see? SEE? THIS PROVES I’M COOL!”

And when you finally do, you’ll be able to put your previous relationship with Leila behind you and move on to the one you’ll need to have going forward. Which, I hate to say it, won’t be and shouldn’t be as a couple. Co-parents, yes, but not partners. You didn’t have that connection when you first started this, and at this point, I think you’ve salted that ground far too thoroughly.

Find yourself, learn to recognize your inherent value and worth that is entirely because you are you, and then find someone who you can connect with as a partner, not as an accessory. It’s going to sting while you do it, but that’s the pain of growth put off for too long.

Good luck.

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