DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’m writing because I’ve been stuck in a mental loop that’s slowly poisoning the way I see myself and how I experience desire.

I don’t have abs. I do have a trained, athletic body, but not one that’s visibly “shredded” or visually striking in the stereotypical way. And here’s where my problem starts: I’ve had sex, relationships, and women who desired me — but almost always after they got to know me.

On paper, that should feel validating. In reality, it doesn’t.

What it ends up reinforcing in my head is the idea that my body alone doesn’t inspire desire. That I’m not wanted at first glance. That my attractiveness only “activates” once I prove myself through personality, presence, intelligence, confidence, or charm. In other words, I feel like I always have to demonstrate something to earn desire.

My ex-girlfriend once told me she fell in love with me because of the way I walked. And instead of feeling good about that, my mind twisted it into something darker — like my physical body itself was irrelevant or disposable, and only the performance mattered.

I’ve never experienced what I imagine as raw, visual desire: the look from a woman at a rave, on the beach, or across a room that says “I want you” without context. And I’ve internalized that absence as proof that I’m lacking something fundamental as a man.

Intellectually, I know this is a distorted belief. Emotionally, it feels deeply ingrained. It makes me feel like a man who must always compensate, always earn, always prove — never simply be desired.

I want to get this schema out of my head. It’s not motivating me; it’s corroding me. I don’t want to measure my worth through imaginary abs or an idealized version of instant visual validation.

How do I dismantle this belief without gaslighting myself? How do I stop equating “being interesting” with “not being desirable”?

Thanks for the work you do, and for reading this.

Best regards,

Feeling Trapped

DEAR FEELING TRAPPED: Women have looked at you like a piece of raw meat, FT; the problem is that you don’t believe it when it happens. You have dismissed the ways that people are into you because you don’t want to believe it’s possible. Until that changes, you’re not going to see it; your confirmation bias is going to tell you that it wasn’t “real”, that it wasn’t about your body or that you’re clearly getting it wrong.

Want proof? Ok… so tell me something: why is telling yourself that you’re desirable, not just as a person but as a piece of meat gaslighting, but “you must look like a Heated Rivalry body double to be desired” isn’t?

Seriously. That’s it in a nutshell. You have already declared that trying to believe anything else is “gaslighting”, which is precisely how you’re going to shut down any chance of changing. Do you see how that’s you closing off the possibility that your mindset is wrong?

That’s why this the place to start. Why are you willing to only accept the worst about yourself as the honest truth, but the belief that people are warm for your form as it is now are delusions and lies? Who is telling you this and, critically, why do you listen to them?

I’m not asking this rhetorically; I’m asking because I want you to actually sit down and dig into why you’ve taken this belief onboard to such a degree that you don’t believe the women you’ve dated who wanted to fuck you until the bed collapsed into splinters. And then I want you to explain to me how they weren’t actually having sex with your body and were only blowing your mind.

Seriously. Re-read your own letter and tell me why someone who thought that the way you walk was what made her fall for you isn’t responding to your body. Have you perfected some mystical technique where you are walking without physical form? Are you just projecting the illusion of locomotion, muscular contractions, and inverse kinematics through sheer psychic power? Or was it the way that you moved your body, much like how dancing is moving your body.

The answer, ultimately, is because you’re looking for a very specific form of validation. You feel like there’s a way that people are “supposed” to be into you, and the idea that context is needed – people needing to get to know you, learn who you are and realize that damn that turns them on – doesn’t “count”. It doesn’t “count”, because you don’t see yourself as being attractive, especially in that very narrow and specific way. You’re buying into a particular idea of how attraction works and I’m willing to bet you $5 cash that most of this comes from men talking about what women find attractive, rather than listening to women.

Women have shown you, time and again, that they lust for you. You aren’t willing to accept it because you feel as though it needs to come in a very specific context, but that’s not a context that actually exists. Not unless you ignore that attraction isn’t inherently and exclusively physical.

Let’s put it another way: when is the last time you wanted to fuck a piece of art? I mean it; when is the last time you looked at, say, The Venus of Arles, The Veiled Maiden or Cupid and Psyche and thought “man, I want to hit that?” Have you looked at Botticelli’s Birth of Venus or even a print of Hildebrandt’s “Unicorn Dreams” and got even a half-chub?

Ok maybe art isn’t your thing, so let’s think about photography instead. When is the last time you have gotten aroused looking at a photo of an attractive nude woman who is just standing straight in a t-pose, arms at 90 degrees to her torso, eyes looking straight forward and a completely neutral expression on her face. There’s no sign of emotion, personality, no sign that she has ever moved, ever.��Or perhaps you should picture a realistic sex doll – one that is functionally indistinguishable from a flesh-and-blood woman, but who just stands there, arms at her side, looking at nothing. Just a physical body, occupying space. Or maybe she’s just lying flat and unresponsive on a bed, a physical form with no indication of life beyond not showing signs of death or decay.

Sure, if that’s the first time you’ve ever seen boobs, it might stir something… but you have to admit, that’s a pretty unerotic image, yeah? The proportions and symmetry is nice, her features are appealing, but nothing about it is going to really inspire feelings of lust.

That’s because there’s more to desire than just meat. Meat, no matter how attractive, is just meat. It’s the spark of life that makes someone desirable – the indications of personality and emotion. There is a reason why Playboy pictorials aren’t just nude people in neutral poses; everything is about implying personality and motion. The coy look and teasing smile suggest awareness that she knows that you’re looking and she likes it. The arch of a back and closed eyes while her hands are placed as though she were running them down her body give a feeling of not just motion but sensual enjoyment – leaving the viewer with the feeling that she is someone who enjoys the physical sensations of hands touching her skin.

In other words: it’s not just her body that’s turning you on, it’s her attitude and personality, the impression of her sexuality and the desire that she feels. It’s all part of the sum totality of who she is, implied in visual short-hand that conveys volumes of meaning in a simple gesture, quirk of the lip and glance to the camera.

Even when the person is a complete stranger or is completely anonymous, you’re filling in the blanks yourself, inventing a person out of posture, pose and facial expression and imagining interacting with her. It’s not just a body, but the person… even if all you are interested in is her physicality.

It’s why a nude model in a life-drawing class isn’t inherently erotic, no matter whether she looks like Sydney Sweeney or Dame Judi Dench. Context, personality, motion… all of these have to come together to trigger that sense of attraction and desire. You aren’t only being aroused by the body, but the holistic person.

Once you understand that – stale jokes about male sexuality aside – that you’re not attracted by physical form alone, is it really that hard to believe that women too are aroused by context?

I mean, women aren’t thirsting after Michael B. Jordan on looks alone, it’s his looks in context with what they think about him. If he were just a motionless, personality-less body like an inactive Host from Westworld… it’s a very different picture.

But maybe it’s unfair to refer to someone who is stupidly hot as an example. Let’s look at, say, Paul Potts instead. Potts, a contestant in the first season of Britain’s Got Talent is a dumpy, kinda chubby guy who, charitably, isn’t going to grace the cover of Men’s Health any time soon. But if you watch his audition on BGT’s official YouTube channel, you can see the way Amanda Holden’s impression of him visibly changes at the 1:05 mark. However, it’s the moment at 2:05 where things peak, because Nessun Dorma isn’t the only thing that’s reached a climax.  Holden hasn’t just changed her impression of him, she’s going to need a change of clothes. Potts may not be the most physically impressive guy, but his voice is powerful and beautiful enough to make people fall for him.

The point is that attraction and arousal isn’t just physical, it’s contextual. Changing the context changes the association and the feelings the person inspires, because it hits that person’s buttons just right. When that context changes, it changes how people feel, and how they feel changes how they see the person. This isn’t just feel-good woo-woo bulls--t, there’s actual science behind it; the more we get to know a person, the more attractive we find them.

So yes, your ex, who loved your walk loved your body… in this case, specifically how you moved your body. That’s not “earning” desire, that’s inspiring desire. That’s someone going “hold on, did it get hot in here” and fanning themselves because they suddenly got hit by a wave of lust.

I know you’ve felt this way too. Be honest – can you really say that you’ve never realized you were hot for someone after you got to know them? Or do you want all of us to believe that you and you alone only fall in lust at first sight and nothing ever shifts that for you? Have you never seen someone you knew in different context and suddenly realized that holy s--t they’re hot? Do you only get hornt up immediately upon seeing someone and never later on?

The point of all of this is that you have been drawn to people because of their holistic selves, not just because of their body. You have almost certainly had times when your attraction to them wasn’t instant, but came after you got to know them. Would you consider your desire for them to be less, if it wasn’t immediate and instant?

If you are capable of accepting that you are capable of being turned on by someone after you got to know them and that this wasn’t them “earning” or “proving” themselves to you, then why doesn’t that apply to them, too?

If you paid attention to women and who they’re into and didn’t dismiss their opinions as fake, misleading or outright lying, you might be surprised. Some women like the Greek statue look. Others would let Matt Berry do any depraved things he wanted because they think he’s just that hot. Go to any forum with lots of women and do a search for “hear me out”, and you’ll be astounded at who and what women think are unspeakably desirable and why.

There comes a point where you have to either accept that the people who love and desire you are doing so because you’re you, with everything that means. That doesn’t mean that you had to “prove” anything or “earn” their desire, not more than women have had to “prove” themselves to you or “earn” your desire.

If you want to change this belief, you have to be willing to change how you feel about yourself. Part of that is going to be accepting that maybe you’re wrong about what women want or how they feel about you. Another part is going to be letting go of the ways you reinforce the belief that you aren’t attractive. This includes not listening to the men who insist they know women better than women do and listening to the women who are saying “yes, yes, OH GOD YES.”

Until then… well, you’re going to be with women who want to climb you like a tree and you’re going to keep calling them liars.

Up to you, my guy.

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’ve been lurking around your website for years now. And I love your articles. It really helped me.

I’m a 23 years old sexually inexperienced male. I don’t know if this is the right place for my question. Because I’m not looking for a dating advice. I just want an advice related to romantic relationships.

The thing is that I’m deeply afraid of intimacy. And I have low self-esteem and I feel ashamed for living with my parents. Even though I’m aware of the fact that my two older uncles still live with their parents and brought their wives home. And I do contribute to my family. Despite knowing all this, I still have trouble believing that I’m a suitable partner. But I’m currently working on those problems.

But there’s also the other side of the problem. I’m afraid of becoming an old virgin, even though abstaining is widely respected in my religious and cultural community. But when I see people online sharing their stories and how they are older, lonely and unhappy with their lives. I panic and get anxious. Not because I’m overweight or old. I’m actually tall. Mildly handsome and slim. And I have a 6-inch penis. And I’m deeply sorry If I sounded like I’m bragging.

“Why do you feel anxious then?” You might ask. Because I feel like I’m wasting those traits. I mean God gave me all those traits. Yet I choose to hide behind fear instead of being grateful and just use them.

Those are the questions I’m asking:

How can I stop obsessing about the label “virgin”? Especially when it’s irrelevant and foreign in my community?

And how can I work on my personal issues without feeling guilty about “wasting my youth?

And how can I learn to embrace uncertainty about relationships instead of obsessing about a specific outcome?

Thank you for your time and the work you do.

Best regards,

QuietObserver

DEAR QUIETOBSERVER: This isn’t a terribly difficult question to answer, QO, because most of the answers are actually pretty damn obvious. However, I pulled your question out of the question bucket precisely because of its obviousness… and how it relates to your circumstances.    

The reason why you feel anxious about your situation – whether the fact that you live at home or your still being a virgin – is pretty simple, QO: it’s because people are telling you to feel bad about it. You say it yourself: it’s because you go online and read posts from people complaining about being older virgins and how that means that they’re lesser. The same thing applies to your living situation – you’re taking in messages from folks who insist that living with their parents or in multi-generational households make them being a loser.

I want to really underline just how much this is distorting your thinking. You’re giving the opinions of random strangers – people you don’t know and who don’t know you – greater influence over your self-esteem than your own lived experience. These strangers, people so separated from you that you’ve never seen their legs and feet, never mind know their real names, have greater say over how you feel than the fact that you have immediate family members who are married, productive members of society and also live with their parents.

You are soaking yourself in these messages and deciding that they have greater validity than even the people around you, who not only think you’re perfectly normal but who respect those qualities.

Hell, not only are you not an outlier in your community, but in your generation. A full third of Gen-Z in the United States alone live with their parents, not because they’re losers or failsons and daughters or overdeveloped children but because the economy has been hit with constant earthquakes and disasters since 2008. The Sub-Prime Mortgage Crisis, the Great Recession and a global pandemic alone have made things like “steady employment”, “a living wage” and “affordable housing” take on qualities of stories told around campfires or written about like they all happened a long time ago, in a galaxy far away.

The same applies to your being a virgin – half of Gen-Z have never had sex. You aren’t an outlier or even particularly uncommon. Being a virgin at the ripe old age of 23 puts you very firmly in the median for your generation. And again, much of this comes down, not to anything being wrong with you but circumstance. I hate to sound like a broken record, but things coming of age just in time to be hit by a global pandemic that killed millions and left all of us physically isolated and distanced from our peers tends to have significant social and psychological effects on people.

However, none of that “counts” as much as when strangers online are telling you, directly and indirectly, that this means that there’s something wrong with you. And these stories are coming to you, in no small part, because algorithmic-driven social media is designed to serve you stories that make you upset. You interact with them, and so the algorithm shows you more of them, which makes you more upset, which then prompts you to keep seeking them out.

Worse, many of the complainers are just crabs in a bucket. They want you to think that they’re right and that all of this is hopeless. They want you to believe you’re stuck, just like them, and they will actively try to pull you back down if you try to leave. After all, if you climb out, that would mean that they could too… and doing so would mean that they’re stuck by choice.

This is why the first step to dealing with all of this is simple. It’s the age-old joke of “Doctor, doctor, it hurts when I do this.” “Well, stop doing that, then.” Quit engaging with the people who tell you that there’s something wrong with you. And I don’t mean “cut it down”, I mean cut it out entirely. Go cold turkey on all of it. Unsubscribe from all the subreddits, delete your YouTube and TikTok accounts, unfollow all the doomers on Twitter, Bluesky, Snapchat – anywhere that you’re drowning yourself in these stories.

(Actually, it’s probably best that you get off Twitter, period, but that’s a separate matter entirely.)

Even just two weeks without reinforcing these narratives will do wonders for your self-esteem and sense of well-being. If you absolutely need to be on TikTok or YouTube or the socials, start with a clean slate and then take an active hand in shaping your experience. Don’t just passively allow the algorithm to throw things in your feed – make a point of only following accounts and creators who aren’t selling you misery, anger and despair. Don’t just mindlessly consume the grievance slop that people call content; pay attention to what you’re paying attention to and what you’re feeding your brain. If it’s stuff only serves to make you feel small, isolated and helpless, then actively reject it. 

But you want to do more than just cut out the negativity; you want to, as the song goes, accentuate the positive. Find the content and creators and influencers who give you hope, who bring joy and a sense of empowerment. You don’t want or need to swing to toxic positivity; you just want to find things that make you feel like good things are not just possible, but achievable. It doesn’t even need to be specifically about your circumstances, just that life can be good and can be better… and without s--tting on other people in the process.

The next step is to actually think about what it is that you want to be doing. You say that you don’t want to waste your youth, and that you have these God-given traits that you’re squandering. OK, great… what does that look like to you? What sort of life do you want to be living? What would a meaningful and fulfilling youth look like to you, specifically? Not what other people think you should be doing, not what pop culture says an ideal youth looks like, you.

What is it that you’re not doing, and what steps can you take to change that? Once you have an idea of what you want, even if it’s just a collection of “well, it’d be cool to try this thing…”, then actually go do them. If you’re not sure, then just try things because it seems like it might be interesting, lead to a cool experience or a fun story to tell later on. Learn Japanese because you feel like it might be fun to watch anime without subtitles. Take a blacksmithing class because beating hot metal seems like it could be cool as hell and you get a knife out of it afterwards. Start learning how to play guitar and write music and go play at open mic nights at your local coffee shops because why not?

Do anything that strikes your fancy, but especially the things that bring you in contact with other people. Those people are your peers, the potential spokes of your social network, folks who are potential friends, mentors, role-models, rivals and even lovers. Going out and connecting with people in the physical world is going to serve you far more than sitting at home, only ever connecting through screens and keyboards. It will remind you that the world looks very different when you actually live in it, rather than just taking the word of strangers who actively avoid doing so.

All of this will give you a sense of meaning and purpose. You will have greater self-worth and a sense of your own ability to make things happen. You’ll be less afraid of uncertainty, simply because you will remember that you aren’t at the mercy of the currents and tides of fate. If one door closes, you can blow a hole in the wall instead.

The antidote to that creeping anxiety is action, genuine action, not just the sort of wheel-spinning that feels like action but doesn’t actually lead anywhere. You know… like reading all those stories about people complaining without actually taking steps to do anything about those complaints. You want to remind yourself that you have agency, that you are the ultimate arbiter of your fate. Yeah, the world will throw curveballs your way. You will live through things that are bigger than you, things that will overwhelm you simply because it’s so immense that it swamps everyone. But that doesn’t mean that you’re powerless; it just means you have to react to changing circumstances, which is still a reminder that you have agency and influence. You may not be able to control the world, but you sure as hell can control how you live in it.

Being active in shaping and directing your life in ways that you choose, rather than just waiting or reacting makes all the difference. Everything comes from reminding yourself that you aren’t helpless and powerless, no matter how much the doomsayers say you are and the crabs try to drag you back into the bucket. You have choices and options, as long as you choose to take them. It’s all up to you.

You’ve got this, GO.

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 wrote you two times (once in October 2020 – “Was This Sexual Abuse” – and I can’t find the second letter), so let’s make a trilogy out of it.

Current situation:

– 36 years old, employed, overweight.

– Suffering from moderate depressions, which get worse over the winter.

– Trauma from being sexually taken advantage of by another person, mommy issues (violent alcoholic), bad relationships (they tried to control me).

– Lonely.

Solutions:

– Get more exercise to lose weight. I know that, I plan to do that, but I don’t do it. It doesn’t help that I work in shifts and my sleep schedule is kaputt. So, changing the job is part of the plan.

– Depressions: got medicated and therapy. I can live with it and do my job in a good and reliable manner. For the first time in my life, I earn real money. I can’t handle it, but I get help for that from my father now.

– I got two cats for the loneliness and I love then very much. I even let it happen, that they love me back and I can feel how it changes my brain chemistry. Literally, I can feel the process in my head, when I cuddle with them.

The point is, what I learned is that you need to be active and relationships are something you find in the outside world and something that happen. I was very lonely and desperate but with the cats I feel loved and I genuinely love them back, without being afraid that I may not be enough or that something is wrong with me. Back then, it was all about desperately making the loneliness go away and I’ve even broke the hearts of three women. Not proud of that, but it showed me how this goes two ways.

On the other hand, without the desperate want for love I kinda lost my drive to pursue a relationship. I mostly tried online dating, since I live in a little town in the middle of nowhere, where there is no active party scene (not my scene) and the hobby community is very small (Tabletop gaming in my case). To be honest I’m used to being overlooked, getting a pass and one time a woman told me to my face would be boring without the beard. She didn’t mean it in a mean way, but it still haunts me.

I believe it’s stories like this and age that makes it harder for me to motivate myself. At university everyone was young and poor and I was afraid of being a loser that still lives with his parents. Now I’m a loser that still lives with his parents and I give less f--ks, but I still feel that want to connect, while knowing that age and working is everybody wearing down. Online dating isn’t an option anymore, because most profiles are fake or they live on the other side of the world, so we probably won’t meet anyway. The only solution is getting out there, meet actual women, get my heart broken and break a few till it sticks. Because I have my problems (see above), but I know people that are worse and they find partners.

So here is the question: how can I hype myself up that a relationship is something worthwhile? How may I lie to myself, that it is something that makes yourself feel good and isn’t only something that gives you tax cuts and makes sure that you’re not alone in your old age, because you’re both too tired to change? How can I think of it something good and not just another unpaid s--tty job, were you do all the work and she doesn’t even like you?

I have to admit, I’m a pessimist at heart and the future looks grim, with the environment being as good as death and humanity just running towards its doom. But I know suicide isn’t an option and I love my cats very much. I can change my medication and do sport and change my job, but where can I start with finding at least some literature to make me think, that I can build something that … I don’t even know what it could be. Maybe just being loved and desired by somebody and actually believing it. Or just coming home and somebody is glad to see me.

Just something.

Thanks

Grim Future Guy

DEAR GRIM FUTURE GUY: There’s a lot here, GFG, especially when we combine it with your previous history of sexual assault and all the rest. I’m not surprised at how much of a number that will have done to you. Nor am I particularly surprised that the current state of, well, everything can put you off, well… almost anything, really. I promise you: you are not the only person looking at what’s going on right now and is literally too depressed to f--k.��No, seriously, it’s a major problem for a lot of folks right now. A lot of people are having hardcore mental health issues because of the accumulated stress and pressure of just trying to survive in these unfortunately increasingly precedented times. 

But depression is quite literally part of your problem. As in, it’s the second thing you list as part of your situation. Speaking from experience, a lot of what you’re describing – that sense of pointlessness, the lack of motivation and interest in things that you would normally be interested in – are classic symptoms of clinical, chronic depression. Depression, after all, isn’t just “the blues”; it’s often more like grey numbness and apathy, where everything feels pointless if it feels like anything, and it’s hard to work up the effort to care even slightly. Hell, it’s even difficult to muster up the energy to actively s--t on yourself, as opposed to just waving a hand in the general direction of your supposed flaws and say “yeah, that stuff.”  

I think this should be your first priority, more than anything else. There’s a lot in your letter that I’m not going to address, in part because so much of it is being exacerbated by the fact that you’re dealing with depression. Trying to talk you through not feeling like a loser because you live at home is the dating equivalent of putting a bandage on a sucking chest wound – it’s trying to treat a symptom rather than the most likely underlying cause.

(You’re not, and multi-generational families are incredibly common, and getting more common with Gen-Z and Alpha; trust me, there’re more folks living like you than not…) 

But even if these problems exist independently of your depression, your depression is still the higher priority. Depression makes everything harder and bleeds into almost every aspect of your life. Once you start getting that under control, I think you’ll find that the rest of it starts looking significantly different than it does now. And even if those problems are still in play after your depression is managed, they’ll be much easier to fix.

Dealing with depression requires a multi-pronged approach. Depression – as in the chronic condition – is often chemical as much as it is psychological, and the best treatment modalities tend to approach it from different angles simultaneously. I highly recommend that you take that approach yourself – working on both the physical/chemical side of things and from the psychological side.

The most obvious starting point is medication. While I know antidepressants have a reputation for unpleasant side-effects, the latest medications are far, far better and more broadly tolerated. Wellbutrin, among others, doesn’t have many of the sexual side effects that a lot of SSRIs have, for example.

Exercise should be another prong in how you treat your depression. Multiple studies, including a meta-analyses published in the Journal of the American Medical Association and another published by the Chochrane Library respectively have found that moderate exercise is helpful in managing symptoms of depression. While both studies point out that this shouldn’t be taken as an indication that exercise alone is an effective treatment, it does suggest that regular vigorous exercise in addition to other forms of treatment is helpful. Since you already want to up the amount of exercise you get, it sounds like a good way to motivate yourself to get started.

Your sleep schedule is another thing that needs to change. You mention that you’re doing shift-work. Shift Work Sleep Disorder is a real condition, and it is known to exacerbate depression and mental health disorders. I’ve linked to a piece that talks about ways of managing SWSD, which will hopefully, help, but I think one of the bigger changes you might want to make is to look for work with more consistent hours if at all possible.

It’s not just about getting seven or eight hours, it’s getting seven or eight hours regularly, consistently and around the same time. If you’re having to change your sleep schedule constantly – a few weeks working the graveyard shift, a few working the standard 8-5, a few working evening – then I’m absolutely not surprised your mental health is taking a nosedive.

The last thing I would suggest on the physical side of things is to look into getting yourself a (suitably named) SAD lamp for the winter months. Not only will this help with the side-effects of your disrupted sleep patterns, but if you have seasonal affective disorder and the gloom of winter is messing with your head, 30 minutes or so of 10,000 lux light first thing in the morning (within an hour of waking up) makes a huge difference. There’re quite a few people on Reddit and elsewhere who have recommendations for ones that’ve worked for them; the Yale School of Medicine has a few they recommend as well.  

On the mental side of the equation, it’s time to talk to a counselor. I recommended this to you when you wrote in during the aftermath of your abusive relationship, and I stand by it. You really should be talking with someone who is familiar with depression and abusive relationships – emotional as well as sexual. You mentioned that your mother was a violent alcoholic; that’s almost certainly lingering in the background and tangled up with the sexual abuse from your previous relationship. Talking with someone who can walk you through the ways that you’ve been hurt and how to heal is going to be massively important.

Now, notice that I’m not telling you how to get hyped up and eager to get back out on the dating scene. That’s because you don’t need motivation, so much as you need to not feel like s--t. Again, speaking from experience, I can tell you that trying to force yourself to do damn near anything when you’re also dealing with depression is a nightmare. Even with all the motivation in the world, it feels like you’re trying to push your way through something thick and viscous. Trying to force yourself to go out, and to be social is already going to be hard. Combining that with the way depression screws with your head and lies to you isn’t just trying to play on Nightmare difficulty, it’s like you downloaded mods to make it an even bigger challenge.

Getting your depression under control will make all the rest much, much easier. You won’t have to fight to muster the energy to care, nor will you have to constantly push back against the voice in the back of your head telling you that there’s no point to it.

But just as importantly, you don’t want motivation. Not really. Motivation in and of itself is poor fuel for improvement and change. While motivation is great for getting started on a project or inspiring you to make a change, it doesn’t last.��If motivation is all that’s getting you out of bed and to the gym or the therapist’s couch, then you’re going to fall off the metaphorical wagon as soon as it runs out. And it will run out. Much like why folks abandon and forget their New Years resolutions, motivation doesn’t last long even when everything is going well. When you’re using it to fuel something that takes a lot of time, discipline and sustained effort, it burns out even faster. And if you’re dealing with depression on top of all of that?

Yeah, nah. That’s a bad idea all around. You’re more or less guaranteeing that you’ll bail on all of it at once.

So, I wouldn’t rely on trying to find “motivation” to go out and meet people. What I’d suggest right now is that you take the motivation to improve your general quality of life and treat your depression, and use it to start building routines that will help keep you going. Going to the gym sucks, but making it a routine – going every three days at 3:30 PM, for example – turns it into just part of your schedule; it’s a lot easier to maintain when it’s just something you do, instead of waiting for the burning desire to lift heavy s--t repeatedly.

Personally, I find it’s helpful to have things that I reserve for whatever routine I’m trying to build. For example, I love my TTRPG actual play shows, but I make a point of only watching or listening to them when I’m working out. If I want to find out what’s currently happening in Araman or Exandria, the Aguefort Adventuring Academy, or The Court of Fey and Flowers, I need to be exercising. If I can’t make it to the gym, t’s easy enough to put in my headphones and head out for a walk or do some body weight exercise routines at home. I may not want to get on the elliptical or do my Romanian deadlifts and goblet squats, but it’s that or get further and further behind in my stories.

Going to therapy is also helpful in this regard; it gives you someone you’re being accountable to, and paying for services is a pretty hefty motivator to ensure you’re actually getting your money’s worth.

Once you start getting your depression managed and you’ve been working with your therapist about the pain you’ve been living with… well, that’s when you’ll be better positioned to go out and build more of a social life. Not, mind you “go out and get a date”, but “build a social life that can lead to dates”. As I’ve been saying for years now: the best way to meet people who are right for you is to be out in the world around other people – people you would want to hang out with, whether you wanted to date them or not. Having people you care about and who care about you, who are on Team You, is a hell of a lot better for helping you be on the lookout for love than hoping to brute-force it through inspirational quotes and philosophical texts.

But that’s for the future. For now, the best thing you can do for yourself is to love yourself enough to recover and improve. Do that first, and the rest will come much, much more easily.

All will be well. 

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