DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’ve a situation that’s been bugging me for a while now. I’m a 38-year-old guy, pretty well put-together, decent job, in decent shape, emotionally intelligent, and I know how to treat people well. I’m not out here looking for some kind of validation, but I’ve been in the dating game long enough to know when something just doesn’t add up.

Here’s the issue: I seem to only ever attract women who aren’t my type and certainly not people I would choose for a date. The women who seem to be the most into me are the ones I have zero attraction to. They’re co-workers, casual friends and friends of friends, people I spend time with and talk to but I’m not interested in, yet they are clearly VERY into me. They’re the ones who text me first, make plans, go out of their way to spend time with me. I don’t get it. There’s no spark, no connection, and I’m not exactly doing anything to encourage them. I’m not going to pretend to be someone I’m not just to make someone feel good. I talk to them normally, I’m polite and friendly and I make all the appropriate noises when they tell me about their day, but I’m not giving them any signals. 

The women I actually like? It’s a nightmare. It takes a ton of work on my part to keep the conversation going and I’m always feeling like I have to chase after them to make plans. I’m having to propose dates weeks or months in advance if I have any hope of fitting into their suddenly packed schedules and all the traveling they have to do for work or family. If we DO have plans, it’s a coin flip as to whether we’re actually going to go out or if something “comes up” at the last minute. These are all women I’ve matched with on dating apps or met at speed dating events or who we specifically talked about going on a date, so it’s not just that I’m hitting on women at random. I’m making this effort but they treat me like I’m just one guy in a long list of options. I feel like I’m the one constantly doing all the chasing, trying to impress, trying to make something happen, and it’s exhausting. It’s like I’m playing hard to get, but for the wrong reasons. Meanwhile, the women I’m not remotely interested in are practically throwing themselves at me. It’s maddening.

I’ve had my share of relationships. Two lasted more than a year, a couple of short-term ones that didn’t work out. I’m not afraid of commitment, I’m not some no-b--ches internet incel dweeb who doesn’t know what he’s doing and I put in a lot of work to be and look my best. I’m just trying to figure out why the women I want seem to be so hard to reach, while the ones I don’t are the ones practically camped outside my door.

This has been going on for YEARS and frankly, it’s messing with my head. What does it say that these women who I don’t like think they have a shot with me, but the ones I know are right for me are treating me like I’m an option at best? 

At this point, I feel like I’m out here doing everything right and still getting nowhere. Any advice would be appreciated because, honestly, I’m getting pretty sick of the whole thing.

Sincerely,

Frustrated, Frantic and Fed Up

DEAR FRUSTRATED, FRANTIC AND FED UP: You’re in luck, F3. A lot of the time, I’d suggest that maybe the problem is illustrated by calling other people “no b--ches internet incel dweebs” and your overall attitude of “what does it say that about me that these uggos think they have a chance?” and call it a day.

Recently, however, I’ve been working with a few clients who have been having issues with chasing after women who never seem to have time for them, or whose type don’t seem to dig them back, so the subject has been top of mind for me lately. And since more than a few folks seem to be wrestling with this lately, this seems like a good opportunity to dig into it.

If we leave your attitude aside for the moment, it’s pretty simple: you’re chasing after these supposedly unavailable women because they’re unavailable. It’s quite literally a matter of your chasing after them because they’re running from you; if they were “attainable”, you wouldn’t be fighting as hard for them. If anything, you’d probably not find them nearly as attractive.

In general, people have a tendency to want things that we can’t have. The harder it is to get, the more frantic people become in their pursuit. We’ve seen this play out over and over again with consumer products – the tumblers, cameras, accessories, makeup or fashions that get popular on TikTok, limited edition toys or shoes or gew-gaws that sell out in seconds and then go for insane markups on eBay or resale sites. If it were common and easy to get ahold of, it wouldn’t have nearly the same allure as something that seems to be just out of reach. 

The elevated and often exaggerated value of these things isn’t intrinsic, as much as it is in how much other people want them. The products themselves may be quite good – those always-on-backorder Fujifilm cameras are pretty damn tight – but it’s the fact that everyone wants them but nobody can get them that makes them extra special. They’re both status symbols – “look at my ability to get this exclusive thing” – and markers of being, if not in the “in crowd”, at least an attempt at being in the know and a la mode.

So it is with women. A lot of guys get hung up on chasing after particular women, not because they like them specifically, but because they think that having those women would be a status boost. The harder it is to “get” them, the more special they must be; the “challenge” of it all means that the relationship is more about “look at what this says about me!” rather than “this person is special of who she is.”

Needless to say, this is the definition of objectifying; the woman in question is less a wonderful and special person and more of a symbol of the man’s supposed higher value and status… not all that different from a sweet pair of limited-edition Nikes or an exclusive Hublot watch.

The other part of this equation involves attachment styles and emotional issues. A lot of people get into cycles of pursuing emotionally unavailable partners because it feels “right” to them. Often, it’s a matter of having an insecure or avoidant attachment style – they grew up having to fight and beg for attention from parents and family who often didn’t have time for them. This leaves them feeling like love is something they have to chase or earn, instead of something that’s given.

Another aspect is what’s known as intermittent reinforcement – where rewards (in this case, attention, love and affection) are doled out not just occasionally, but often seemingly randomly. You receive just enough of a reward to keep you engaged, but never on a consistent basis and certainly never at a level that’s commensurate with the effort to receive it. It’s the way slot machines in casinos or gacha games or loot boxes hook players; it’s the hope that maybe this next pull of the lever or cashing in the in-game currency (paid for with real money) will pay off the way you want.

Intermittent reinforcement has long been a part of the dating scene. The authors of The Rules infamously suggested that playing “hard to get”, even with people you were actively dating, was the “only” way to get and keep a man. Toxic and abusive people use it to manipulate and control their partners. But sometimes it’s a self-inflicted injury; like Pepe Le Pew they don’t realize that their sweet little cherie isn’t playing hard to get, they just don’t like them.

Guess which of these you’re doing. The issue here isn’t that these women are playing games or making you dance for their amusement because they like playing with their orbiters like a cat playing with mice; they’re not into you and you’re not getting the message. Instead, you’re romanticizing their distance and lack of attention as making them more beguiling and letting the smallest crumb of attention be all the encouragement you need to keep following them like a puppy.

You need to take a long, hard look at who you’re pursuing and how they’re behaving and ask yourself: why aren’t you taking “not interested” for an answer? Why is it the people you’re most consistently attracted to are the ones who show the least amount of reciprocal interest? Why are you not willing to accept that this behavior is, in fact, a signal that they don’t like you and don’t want to go on a date with you?

(Here’s a hint: it’s called ‘the sunk-cost fallacy’; you’re unwilling to admit that your investment is never going to pay off, so you keep throwing time and energy at it out of the fear that you’ll walk away right before you would’ve hit the jackpot.)

Incidentally, this is also part of why those women you’re not interested in are so seemingly dogged in their pursuit of you.  Leaving aside the ones who are just trying to be friends, not drag you to the altar, you’re doing to them what those other women are supposedly doing to you.

This is a good time to ask why you’re not giving those women a more definite wave-off, then flip it around and apply the same thinking to the women who never seem to have time for you. Don’t want to be rude? Feel like you have to maintain a baseline in order to keep things harmonious at work? Worried that you’re going to reject them only to be told they weren’t trying to date you and now you look foolish?  Cool… all those possibilities also apply to the women who are taking six days to reply to your texts and ghosting you when you’ve badgered them into dates they don’t want to go on.

At the risk of sounding like a hackey joke about psychology, now would be a very good time to go talk to a therapist about your relationship with your mother. If you’re this consistent in pursuing people who are just uninterested in you and are turned off or made uncomfortable by people who are interested and available, the odds that this is an emotional wound going all the way back to childhood are… well, a lot higher than the odds that this slot machine will eventually pay off.

Go work on healing those wounds (and your attitude) and you’ll see things change.

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’m in a situation that has me genuinely confused. My girlfriend complains that we don’t have enough sex. From my perspective, I always thought she, as a woman, would feel relieved that I don’t push for it as much.

For years I worked on reducing my sexual desire through meditation, discipline, and channeling my energy into other aspects of life. My reasoning was that male sexual desire is naturally stronger, and that by lowering mine I would actually make things easier for her.

Here’s what confuses me: if heterosexual female desire were as strong as male desire, wouldn’t we see more evidence of it in everyday life? Women openly seeking sex, a whole market built around it, etc.? Since I don’t observe that, I assumed my girlfriend would appreciate my lower libido rather than feel frustrated by it.

Now I find myself surprised that she wants more, and I don’t understand. Am I misinterpreting the difference between male and female desire? How can I reconcile the discipline I’ve built in managing my impulses with my girlfriend’s needs?

Thank you,

Namast3

DEAR NAMAST3: Alright, I’m going to be honest – when I got this letter, I nearly tossed it aside as an obvious s--tpost. But as I’ve said many times before: I’m not overly concerned about folks trying to slip fake or bulls--t letters past me if there’s something for other readers to take away from it.

And considering how often “women say they want this but men say they don’t, who should I believe” comes up… well, this is at least more plausible than some letters I’ve answered.

So: yes, you’re misinterpreting the difference between male and female desire. The idea that men are the lustier gender is actually very recent; for a very long time, it was assumed that women were, in fact, the more sexual gender. Ovid wrote about how Tiresias was force-femmed by the gods in order to settle a bet over who likes sex more, declaring definitively that women did. Medieval folklore, likewise, was full of female witches and demons who tricked or coerced men into fulfilling their insatiable needs.

I’d also point out that there are a number of women in history who were rather famous for being hornt up. One of my favorites is Julie d’Aubigny, a French opera singer and flagrant disaster bisexual, who would repeatedly beat men in duels after having been caught flirting with their wives and who burned down a convent as part of a plan to rescue one of her lovers.

It wasn’t until the late 19th and early 20th century when the view started to shift – a process that was promoted, in part, by the proto-feminist movement of the time. The idea was that men were the more bestial and baser of the genders, and it was on women – who were more spiritual and “pure” to help them reign in their animal lusts and impulses – a belief that has continued well into the modern era.

But to assume that women were uninterested in sex or that there isn’t a series of industries supporting that interest requires a certain amount of nearly deliberate ignorance. Magazine racks and book shelves have been littered with guides and advice for women on attracting men and having better sex. Shows like Sex in the City and Fleabag put female desire front and center and movies like Fatal Attraction portray that desire as powerful and terrible. The Twilight books were not shy about how much Bella wanted to bone Edward and I have no idea how you could’ve missed the entire 50 Shades of Grey phenomenon that brought BDSM to middle-America. And that’s not counting the literal terabytes of woman-written smut, from romance novels to fanfic on An Archive of Our Own that’s spicier than hardware store hot sauce.

S--t, you can find vibrators for sale on the racks at CVS and Walgreens, while you still have to go to the counter and show ID to get allergy pills.  

So, I can’t help you with why you haven’t seen this, because it hasn’t exactly been hidden.

The reason why women aren’t as openly seeking sex or wanting sex in their personal lives is because society still punishes them for it, especially if they’re seeking then “wrong” kind of sex or in the “wrong” way. Witness the hue and cry over every female singer, from Madonna to Sabrina Carpenter, from Sade to 20 Fingers, to Khia, to Lizzo and Cardi B. for singing or rapping about wanting to get d--ked down like a champion. Every time, there’s been a clutching of pearl necklaces and fluttering hands about how awful it all is and what sort of example they’re spreading. Even basic sexual and reproductive health care for women, from hormonal birth control to HPV vaccines are treated as though they encourage “innocent young maidens” to become rapacious Jezebels.

And of course, guys have a tendency to lose their s--t when women are more open about their sexual interest; part of the reason for all the ‘tradwife’ fetish material that showed up everywhere was catering to dudes who get uncomfortable around the flouting of “traditional” gender roles in the dating scene.

So yes, Namast3, women do, in fact get horny. In fact, women’s capacity for sexual desire is as varied as men’s; just as men can be asexual or have low libidos, women can be absolute f--k-monsters. The difference is a combination of social opprobrium and the fact that sex – from pregnancy to the spread of STIs to physical assault – is riskier for women than it is for men.

But even if this wasn’t the case, there’s still the matter of you talking to your girlfriend about what she wants instead of just making assumptions. It would be one thing if this were a case of mismatched libidos, where she would like to be having sex more often than you; that happens quite frequently, especially among couples who don’t prioritize sexual compatibility when they’re looking for a relationship. But instead, this was you unilaterally assuming that you knew your girlfriend better than she did and apparently not bothering to check in with her.

Here’s a handy rule of thumb: if “common sense” says one thing about what women want and your girlfriend says another, side with your girlfriend. I promise you: she knows what she wants far better than a bunch of angry single guys and slapdick grievance peddlers on Reddit whose chief source is “Dude, Trust Me”.

How do you “resolve” the difference between your discipline and your girlfriend’s desires? Well, I guess you decide which is more important for you: continuing to repress yourself until you’re single again and you can find someone who’s not as horny, or a lot more banging with your girlfriend.

Your call.

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

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’ve been reading your blog for a few years now. I remember when I first got exposed to the ideas of personal responsibility and living with intent. Naturally, I hated it. Over the years I internalized these ideas to get where I am now. I’m no longer in student debt and I’m moving out of my unhappy family home very soon. I have an in-depth dating question but first I’d like to get some context out of the way as well as some very substantial progress I’ve made mentally.

I’ve done a lot of crazy things over the past 2 years. From jumping out of a plane to completely changing careers. My idea of who I am got broken, built up, broken again, and it has happened yet again. Only this time, who I am feels comfortably familiar. I was abused growing up. It didn’t come from my family, who were more neglectful due to circumstance, but rather my teachers and school staff. I was told over and over again how worthless I was and how I would never amount to anything. That I should have been more like my classmates. Never achieving, always behind. Always measured by a yardstick when I needed a meter stick. I am autistic, so my path has always been different from everyone else’s’. Of course, my abusers didn’t understand or care to understand this.

I was a happy-go-lucky kid. I had a childlike wonder and enthusiasm for life like no other. I laughed quickly as well as cried. I could endlessly talk about my passions like they were physically a part of me. I was goofy, kind and most of all: deeply intelligent (though I was taught to doubt this). I didn’t believe my abusers at first. I was just a confused kid wondering why these adults were being so mean to me. Eventually though, tragically, the dark words and manipulation began to stick. By 10 years old I was convinced I was worthless and wanted to die. I was 10. The loving kid who liked Animal Planet and Discovery Channel and could talk endlessly about Lord of the Rings and Star Wars, was dead.

And he stayed dead for almost two decades.

Until now.

I often grappled with the question “when will I be lovable.” And I’ve sent enough letters about it. Always convinced I needed to find some mythical “good enough” standard to be considered dateable but more importantly: worthy of existing. I tried so desperately to be cool. To learn cool skills, develop charisma, become that sexy somebody who could f--k any woman I wanted. I took the Grimes Test but took the absolute worst lesson from it ever.

Unless you are constantly improving, you are nothing.

Your worth is what you provide, not who you are.

“What do you bring to the table?” Didn’t become a question of what kind of person I was, but what my “sexual market value” was. Self-worth coming from the absolute most shallow, inconsequential places imaginable.

I obsessively compared myself to everyone who was doing “better” than me. I needed to be more, all the time. More this, more that. More, more, more. I never felt enough simply being who I was.

Until I realized something: I wasn’t comparing to other people, I was comparing to a magical, non-existent version of myself. A Shadow. One that was everything I wanted but would always be out of reach because I made it so.

So I stopped trying to be cool. And it has been the absolute best decision I have ever made. I looked the Shadow in the eye and told it “You Don’t Get to Speak for Me.” Ever since, the person I lost to abuse, has come back to life.

I’m myself again. After nearly 20 years, I’m myself again. I finally shed the mask that was forced onto me. I’m sure you’ve heard of the term “autistic masking.” That’s essentially what was done to me, only it was bolted to my face like an Uruk-Hai Berserker at Helm’s Deep. Any uniqueness, any edge or humanity, was scrubbed from my personality to be more palatable to neurotypicals.

I am making the executive choice to say “f--k that” and bring back my weird, goofy, wonderfully passionate self. I know it’s not “optimal.” I know it’s not the ripped, master chef, effortlessly charismatic cartoon character the Shadow whispered in my ear for decades.

But I don’t care. I don’t want to be perfect. I don’t want to be cool. I don’t want to be optimal. I want to be ME.

I was at a drive through and saw a dog-shaped cloud and laughed at it for like 10 min because it made me happy. I like to make weird jokes that people probably won’t get but I don’t care because I find them funny. I want to gush about the things I love because I love them. I want to be kind to people because it’s important and everyone should be kind.

Now don’t get me wrong, I will continue to grow as a person until the day I die. But now it’s gonna be on my own terms. Not in accordance with someone else’s.

This finally brings me to my question: what would flirting look like for me? I know that at its core it’s just showing interest in a fun way and communicating it to someone with vulnerability and sincerity. But I’m still trying to figure that out as I’ve tried some flirting styles in accordance with the mask I wore but now that the mask dropped, I’m kind of back to square one. A pretty good comparison to me personality wise is Jacksepticeye. He is also autistic and we’re very similar people. Bubbly, happy, and have endless joy we want to share with the world. Probably not the most stereotypically “masculine” but I don’t care to be what’s en vogue.

So I guess that’s it. What might it look like for me, given all I’ve provided. Thank you so much for everything you’ve done for me, and helped me do for myself.

Sincerely,

The Unmasked

DEAR THE UNMASKED: I’m glad to hear about all the progress you’ve made, TU, and how you’re returning to your most authentic and honest self. That’s incredibly important, not just for dating and relationships but for having a good and satisfying life. I’ve talked before about having been in the PUA scene and watching a LOT of the folks I hung out with hit serious downward spirals that, in a couple of cases, ended with them in the hospital or worse. Almost every time, it was because they were trying to be someone that they thought they were “supposed” to be, instead of who they were.

That’s damaging under the best of circumstances. It’s even more so when you’re dealing with being neurodivergent or you have issues with depression or emotional dysregulation. So finding (or returning to) your true self, embracing it and honoring it is a huge, huge step in the right direction.

It’s also a reminder of an important point: fun beats “cool”, hands down, every time. Which, conveniently enough, is also how we’re gonna segue into the answer to your question.

The thing about flirting is that the way you flirt can be as varied and unique as the person doing the flirting. This is because there’s no one way to flirt. There’s an underlying principle to flirting correctly, but the method – and the people those methods work for – are going to look differently depending on who’s doing the flirting.

The issue at hand is that a lot of people think flirting is how you generate attraction – that if you know how to do it right, you’ll be irresistible. But that’s not the case. Flirting isn’t generating attraction; flirting is the expression of attraction. The core of flirting is very simple: you’re telling someone you like them, in a way that’s enticing and fun, and ideally, you’re encouraging them to have fun with you. That’s where the reciprocal attraction comes from – the fact that someone is enjoying and appreciating the time they’re spending with you.

Flirting is also a subtle way of screening for people who are right for you. Flirting, after all, doesn’t work if it’s not fun for everyone involved. While there is a skill aspect to it, if someone’s idea of fun or enjoyment doesn’t line up with yours, you’re probably not going to be a good match. One person’s banter is another person’s tedious ‘why can’t you ever be serious’ or, worse, feels like negging. That implies a mismatch; if they’re not enjoying it, then that may well be a sign that your personalities won’t mesh the way you would need for a strong or serious relationship.

If folks aren’t responding well to your flirting, it’s good to both ask if your flirting style needs a little polish… but it also is worth asking if you’re flirting with the right people.  Yeah, you want to flirt in a way that other people will respond to… but if it’s something that’s not in alignment with who you are as a person, then you aren’t going to be enjoying it. And if you’re not enjoying the flirting that the other person responds to, the odds are good that you’re not going to enjoy a long-term relationship with them. After all, if you feel like you have to act in ways that aren’t authentic to who you are in order to express interest and find reciprocal interest, it stands to reason that this is going to be a trend in the rest of the relationship.

The trick to finding your flirting style is knowing yourself and expressing yourself in an authentic manner. If you’re someone who, for example, likes banter and word play, then a more teasing and playfully antagonistic form of flirting might work for you. If you’re someone who’s more sincere and direct, then banter may not work for you, but appreciation and enthusiasm might work better, instead. Something along the lines of “hey, I would love for you to introduce your favorite thing to me”, for example, will hit some folks like an atomic bomb – the idea that someone wants to hear all their thoughts about KPop Demon Hunters will be like their birthday, Christmas and Hogswatch all at the same time.

Recognizing and embracing your personality into your flirting is also helpful for building and maintaining emotional momentum. One form of flirting – that folks often don’t recognize as flirting – is “pebbling”. The name stems from the way that male gentoo penguins will seek out a great pebble to present to potential mates; it’s an offer of the first stone to building a nest. In a flirting context, pebbling is finding and sharing something that’s either relevant to the other person’s interests, or that they might find interesting, funny or sweet. It’s a way of saying “I’ve been paying attention to the things you like and I wanted to bring you more of it.” You’re showing that you care, not just by bringing something you think they’d enjoy, but showing that you understand and respect their interests and passions.

The fact that you’ve been returning to your authentic self is an opportunity to think about the ways you’d like to express interest and the ways you like to have fun with people, as well as the ways that the people you’d most like to date would have fun. Since you’re prioritizing fun and joy, perhaps that’s where you should start: both sharing the things that bring you joy and being curious and interested in what brings other people joy. As an exercise, you might want to think of how to “pitch” your interests to folks – what about it do you find fascinating or fun and why? What got you into it, what about it speaks to you and how would you describe this to someone who may be encountering it for the first time? People make jokes about the whole “It’s X Meets Y” formula for books, TV, movies or video games, but this comparison to something familiar makes for an easy entrance into a topic; it gives the other person a familiar starting place that can make it feel less strange, esoteric or intimidating.

The benefit of this exercise is that you can then turn it around; if you can explain your interests and how they hit you just right, you then have a structure about how to ask about someone else’s interests. So what is it about this genre of music or that sport or that hobby that speaks to them? How’d they get into it? You can even get playful with it by inviting them to be a little self-aggrandizing; if they had to impress $CELEBRITY_JUDGE, how would they go about doing it? What would they pick as an example, how would they make it their own and so on.

And that part’s important; flirting is reciprocal. It’s not showing off, it’s sharing. Guys who use humor in their flirting, for example, have to be careful that they’re not just performing. There’s a difference between being silly and jokey and testing your tight five, after all. You want the person you’re flirting with to flirt back, whether that means volleying teases right back or having the opportunity to gush over their favorite things, to playfully invite you to “chase” them or what have you. When they do, you want to respond positively; if someone says “oh, I love watching vocal coaches reacting to $SONGS” and you go into a rant about how they just interrupt a song and drag a 3 minute ditty into a 20 minute YouTube video, then all you’re doing is shutting them down. Instead, it’s better to say “I’ve never really gotten into that; what do you like about it?” and let them explain it. Even if you still don’t like it, the fact that you can appreciate that they do and want to understand why it has meaning for them is appealing.

The last thing I will tell you is that flirting is a skill, and the only way to improve it is to do it. You can theorize all you want, but none of that will help without actually putting it into practice out in the field. While it may be awkward at first, any mistakes will help you fine tune your approach. If things seem to be falling flat, change it up a little and see if taking a different angle works better. That trial and error will help you find the way that works best for you and with the people you like.

So take that introspection and unearthing you’ve been doing and play around with it. Think about what you would like to share with others and how, and then use that as a basis for encouraging them to share with you. It may take a little practice, but before long, you’ll be flirting like a champ.

Good luck.

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