DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I hope you don’t mind me reaching out. I’m writing because I could really use your perspective right now. 

So I (26/m/straight) met “Alice” (28/f/straight) through friends at a party. We got along well and had great conversations at the party, but neither of us thought to get the other’s number or contact information. At the time it just felt like one of those “hey, that was cool” moments of meeting someone and having a nice time talking to them. I didn’t think much of it until I randomly ran into her a couple weeks later at a vintage expo when we were both browsing the same records. We talked music, favorite bands, how we got into record collecting, then went to get lunch and just kept talking. By the time we both had to leave, I think we’d spent the better part of the day just hanging out and talking. This time, we actually exchanged numbers and made plans to see each other again. 

This continued for a couple of months before I realized I really liked her and asked if she wanted to go on a date. She turned me down and honestly, it kind of hurt but I was ok with it. Then she told me that she wanted to, but she had just gotten out of a relationship that made her realize that she had a lot of baggage and “bad habits” (as she put it) that kept causing problems and she was taking a break from any non-platonic relationship while she worked on herself. According to her, this meant no dating, no sex, not even kissing – at least, not like she would with a boyfriend. She told me that she liked me, she wanted to be friends and would probably still want to go on a date in the future, but she didn’t want to give me false hope, because that was going to be a while and she couldn’t say how long it would be. She told me, specifically, that while she wanted to stay friends, she didn’t want to be unfair to me and that she didn’t want me to wait for her, and I should date other people instead. She also said she could understand if I needed to pull back.  

For the record, I believe she’s being straightforward with me, instead of giving me a soft no; I know she’s seeing someone about some of the issues that’ve come up in her past relationships. 

Since then, we still hang out as friends and I’m still incredibly attracted to her, but I haven’t really moved on, and I’m not sure I am going to. 

That’s why I’m writing. The question I have is: what do you do when the person you want to date doesn’t want to date you, but you don’t want to date anyone else? I’ve read what you’ve written about oneitis and I don’t think that this is what this is. I think she’s amazing, but I don’t think she’s The One. I’m not waiting for her to decide she’s ready for me. In fact, I’ve gone on dates with a couple of other women. It’s not that I think she’s the only person for me, it’s that I’m just not interested in anyone else, even after giving them a fair chance. 

The women I’ve met and gone out with (some from Hinge, some I met in person) have all been cute and very nice, and I don’t think I’m comparing them to her. I got along with them well enough to try a second and in one case third date, but every time I eventually had to admit that I just didn’t feel anything for them and after a while it just felt like I was just trying to meet people for the sake of meeting people. When I stopped, I didn’t feel like I was giving up, I just felt like I was just not doing a thing that wasn’t working for me. 

Right now, we text and talk regularly, but don’t hang out as often as I’d like. I’d like to see more of her, but I’m trying hard not to feel like I’m going on “dates” with her – out of respect for her progress and also so I don’t get weird about her. 

My friends think I’m holding on for no reason. I don’t think I’m holding on to anything; I like her, and I want more, but I think I’m pretty content as it is. I’ve tried to meet other people I like and it just felt like I was killing time, so I stopped. 

Am I making a mistake here? Is it like my friends said and I should be taking her “I’m not ready to date” as “I don’t want to date you?” I think if she eventually does decide she’s ready to date someone else, I’ll be able to handle it… am I just fooling myself? 

Help me out here. What should I do?

Best,

Move On From What?

DEAR MOVE ON FROM WHAT: If I’m being honest, this doesn’t really sound like a problem, MOFW.

The thing about Oneitis is that it’s less about the other person as it is about you. Oneitis tends to be more about your relationship with yourself. Some folks get Oneitis because they’re afraid the person they’re stuck on is their last and only chance for love; they don’t believe that they could find someone else like that person. Others haven’t fallen in love with a person, so much as what that person represents – often something they feel lacking in themselves. Still others feel like they’re owed something – whether by the person, by the universe, by life. All of it, however, tends to be dramatic, full of longing, pain, anxiety and envy. It has far more in common with limerence than with love.

It also tends to be a rejection of reality, a refusal to see what’s plainly happening. It’s pretending not to recognize a “soft” no, to selectively hearing what a person says when they turn them down and looking for excuses to not let go and move on. When someone is down to reading the metaphorical tea leaves for signs that the other person’s feelings are changing, what they’re really doing is letting motivated reasoning keep them from accepting the truth – a truth that, on some level, they already know.

What you’re describing sounds more realistic, for lack of a better term. You seem like you really like this person, you’re respecting their wishes, and you’re willing to wait and see what happens when they’re ready to date again.

And, well, to be perfectly honest, I don’t think that is a great idea. The problem with choosing to wait is that you are basically putting your life on hold for what is ultimately a longshot. Let’s take it as given that Alice is being honest with you about working on herself before she dates again. If that’s the case, that’s great; I fully support people wanting to take care of themselves, make themselves a priority and to be sure they’re in a good place when they return to the dating market. But – and I hate to say it �– there’s a non-zero chance that the person she’ll be at the end of this may not be the person who was attracted to you. It’s possible that the things that fueled her attraction to you may also be the things that she needs to change.

This isn’t to say that you’d be a bad boyfriend or that there’s something wrong with you, don’t get me wrong. It could well be that the issue is with her; you may well be a great potential boyfriend for her, but dating you would lead to repeating a cycle she’s been through before where she is the problem. So if and when she’s at a place where she’s ready to date, she may have realized that while you’re a great guy, a relationship with you wouldn’t work and so she has to say “no, thank you”.

Now to be fair (to be faaaaaaaaiiiiir): you aren’t, or at least weren’t, just hanging around waiting. It sounds like you made some good faith efforts to date around and meet other people and it didn’t work out. That’s pretty different from putting her on a pedestal and finding other women wanting in comparison. If you’re avoiding meeting other people or holding yourself back in some desire to be “faithful” to her, that’d be one thing. Deciding that being actively on the dating market wasn’t doing it for you is another thing entirely.

Frankly, I don’t think this is a situation I would be happy with, but I’m not the one dealing with it. What wouldn’t work for me doesn’t really matter if you’re cool with how things are. If you’re ok with maintaining the status quo, you aren’t just pining away like a puppy sitting at the door waiting for its owner to come home and you understand that the odds of getting what you’re hoping for are lower than most people would prefer… I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it. I just think it’s not a great choice.

The only thing I would suggest is that you don’t close yourself off to dating other people entirely. You don’t have to put yourself out there and force yourself to try to catch feelings for someone else, and I think trying to date someone to get over Alice wouldn’t be fair to the other person. Just stay open to the possibility of meeting someone who might be just as awesome as Alice, but also is in a place where she is ready, willing and able to date you.

Otherwise, do what makes you happy, my guy. If you’re happy like this then hey, that’s all that really matters.

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 is a question I never thought I would have to ask: how do I help someone through a break up when they’re still in a relationship with me? I’m in a polyamorous relationship, with most of our relationships being parallel; my partner’s relationships are their own and separate from ours, just as my other relationships are separate from theirs. We’ve both been on good terms with our metamours, but not close and we generally like it that way. 

Recently, my partner has been going through a rough time. Their job is restructuring, so they were let go, their grandmother has gone into hospice care after years of battling a series of illnesses and then their partner broke up with them with no warning or explanation.

My partner feels crushed and blindsided by this, and I understand that. I want to help them as best as I can, but I’m honestly struggling over how to do it.I care deeply about them and genuinely want to be supportive, but what’s making this hard for me is that I’m finding myself tangled up in feelings that I don’t love or fully understand.

On the surface, I know what the “right” thoughts are. I know that their breakup isn’t about me, that loving more than one person doesn’t mean loving any one person less, and that my partner’s grief doesn’t invalidate our relationship. Intellectually, I’m solid on all of that.

Emotionally, though, I keep circling back to a quieter, uglier question: why am I not enough?

I feel embarrassed even writing that. I don’t believe any one person is supposed to be “enough” for someone else, and I don’t resent my partner for having loved another person. But there’s that part of me that feels hurt that the fact that they still have my love and care and concern doesn’t help. Watching them mourn that loss and not being able to help has stirred up a lot of insecurity and comparison in me. It’s hard not to feel like I’m failing somehow, even though I know that framing is illogical and unfair.

What I’m struggling with most is how to show up for them without making their pain about my discomfort. I want to be a source of comfort, not someone who needs reassurance while they’re grieving. At the same time, I don’t want to shove my feelings down so hard that they come out sideways as resentment or withdrawal.

How do I support a partner through a breakup that doesn’t involve me, while also tending to my own insecurities in a way that’s honest but not burdensome? Is this just one of those moments where I sit with the discomfort and let it pass, or is there a healthier way to approach it?

Signed,�It’s Not About Me

DEAR IT’S NOT ABOUT ME: One of the worst feelings in the world is feeling powerless, INAM. The idea that there’s something wrong, something that is hurting the people you care about and there’s nothing you can do about it can feel like a rock in your shoe or something rubbing under your armpit or the crease of your thigh and groin – chafing at sensitive skin whenever you move even a little.

It gets even worse when that feeling makes you feel bad – that your seeming impotence says something about you. Like it’s a personal failing, or a sign that there’s something insufficient in you.

Even knowing that this doesn’t make sense, or that the feeling is just that – a feeling – doesn’t necessarily help. What the brain knows and what the heart feels are often different things, even when (or rather especially when) they’re diametrically opposed to one another.

The problem is that feelings aren’t logical or sensible. You can’t reason your way out of feeling something. Feelings just are. You feel things because you feel them. They may be feelings you were trained to feel – through experience, repetition or even cultural upbringing – or ones that you feel because they echo past events that triggered similar feelings… but they’re not rational. The triggers and causes may be, but the feelings themselves aren’t.

This is why the key to managing these feelings is to accept them and understand them as best you can. You may not be able to change that uncomfortable twinge that you recognize as selfish, but you can say “ok, that’s just a moment of insecurity. It’ll pass,” and then refocus your attention elsewhere. And it will pass; it’s very hard to feel something constantly and consistently for very long. Not without focusing on it and reinforcing it. When you’re busy focusing on that uncomfortable feeling, you’re giving it bandwidth. You’re making it more present in the front of your mind, which feeds it the way tinder feeds a fire. If you leave the feeling alone, it tends to pass. This is why people are encouraged to count to ten when they’re angry; it forces you to pause and redirect your attention, giving the anger time to fade on its own.

So the first thing I can recommend is just giving yourself a moment to acknowledge that you’re experiencing those feelings and then turn your attention elsewhere. The pang of insecurity and ‘why am I not enough’ will pass, faster than you realize.

The next thing I think is important to understand and acknowledge is that love isn’t fungible. Your partner’s feelings don’t take away from their feelings for you… but they’re not replaceable by you either. The pain they feel isn’t just that the volume of love has been reduced, but that this specificperson is gone from their life. This is the inverse of “trying to fill a hole marked ‘girlfriend’” that I talk about; the person who occupied that space in their life is no longer there, and it’s that specificemptiness that hurts them. Just as shoving any warm body into the “girlfriend” slot doesn’t work, youcan’t fill the hole someone else left.

If you’ll forgive an awkward metaphor, when a beloved pet dies, replacing them with another doesn’t make the pain go away. If you have more than one pet, the others don’t pick up the slack. It’s that particular loss, that individual that’s missing that hurts.

It’s admirable that you want to be able to love them so much that you fill that hole. But you can’t. Nobody can. And it sucks. It really, really sucks. The only thing that there is to do is let the hole close on its own.

The last thing is that, unfortunately, no matter how much we may want to, we can’t take away someone else’s pain. We can’t love someone until they don’t feel pain, no matter how much we care. And that part hurts us and frustrates us because it’s a reminder that we’re powerless – the very thing that we hate so much.

Or more accurately… we’re powerless in this specific way. We can’t make the pain go away and we can’t replace what was lost. It’s simply not something that anyone can do. But that’s not what’s needed, or even what helps. What you can do and what your partner needs is very simple: you can provide the security and safety they need. You may not be able to make the loss unhappen, but you can create a space for them to feel, to cry, to just let all their walls down and just be. You can be their security, a reminder that you’re there, you’re not going anywhere, and they’re not alone. They don’t need to fear losing someone else, especially not when they’ve already lost so much and will lose more sooner than later.

Sometimes the act of quietly holding someone so they can just let the tears flow freely and sob like a child without embarrassment or shame is the most loving and comforting thing you can do. Creating a space where they can feel what they’re feeling without judging themselves for it – “I’m an adult, I should be able to handle this”, “I can’t burden my other partners with this”, “I can’t let my partner see me like this, they’ll lose respect for me”, “it’s embarrassing for me to be bawling like a baby like this” – is a gift. It’s a kind of unconditional love we often don’t think of, giving someone a place where they can be their most raw and vulnerable, where they can let down the walls they keep up to protect themselves even from themselves.

It doesn’t seem like much. Just quiet acceptance, warmth, reassurance and a lack of judgement. But when someone’s hurting, having a space where they can let that pain out, without feeling like they have to edit or hold back? Where they don’t have to keep some of that pain inside where it will calcify and make the healing process take longer? That’s huge.

And if you can provide that for your partner, I think you’ll find that you won’t feel like you aren’t “enough” for him. You won’t feel like your love isn’t sufficient. Instead, you’ll be precisely who and what he needs right then. And that is more than enough.

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 struggle to understand my own desirability as a man. I don’t really know what it feels like to be wanted, what that looks like in the real world, or how I’m even supposed to go about having a sex life.

On paper, I should be doing fine. I’m tall, dark, and conventionally handsome. I’m lean with good muscularity. I’m socially capable and confident in every other area of my life. I’d say I have both the looks and the character, and the feedback I receive from others seems to confirm this. Despite this, women don’t appear to show much interest in me. I show up and socialise with the women I do meet, but despite positive interactions and relationships, there’s never any chemistry or hint of interest on their part. I’ve never been on a date or had a “talking phase”. What makes this harder to reconcile is that men who are, by most conventional measures, less attractive or seemingly less put together than me, seem to have little trouble having sex and forming relationships.

Things are further complicated by the fact that I’m not sexually inexperienced, and would actually say I’m more experienced than average. I’ve hung out with a lot of social circles over the years, with a good number of women, but it was always simply a case of “right place, right time”. Those experiences were always fleeting. I felt more like a placeholder than someone genuinely desired, and each time I was quickly replaced by someone they appeared far more interested in.

Still, despite my previous experiences and positive attributes, I cannot accept the idea of me being a sexually desirable man.

Over time, this disconnect has contributed to a complicated relationship with pornography. I’ve never binged for hours, used it in inappropriate situations, or escalated into extreme material, but it has become a crutch for loneliness. I’ve tried to quit many times over the years. When I don’t use it, I feel noticeably better, and life seems to respond positively, such as my social interactions improving. I’m clean at the moment, yet I still find myself constantly thinking about it. On one hand, I get lost in the fantasy; on the other, I try to dismantle it by acknowledging the exploitation, coercion, addiction, and abuse that are so prevalent in the industry. Even though I understand intellectually that what I’m seeing is staged and performed by paid actors, quite possibly by people who don’t want to be there, I can’t shake the expressions of enthusiasm, even when I can also see the track marks. I’m jealous of them, because after all these are real men and women having sex with each other. It all occupies my thoughts far more than I’d like. In a sense I feel “left out”, and this made even worse with the increasing number of amateur content. If I lived in the U.S., I think I might have been tempted to join the industry myself. I don’t understand how people in general move towards sexual relationships.

So here I am, in my mid-thirties, feeling like the most undesirable man alive, with a dark shadow hanging over my head, making it even harder to believe that I could ever be genuinely wanted.

To finish, the irony in all of this is that while I may have some sexually deviant fantasies and wouldn’t mind more casual experiences, what I ultimately want is a happy, healthy, monogamous relationship. The fantasy of taking part in an orgy, for example, is just that – a fantasy born of loneliness and a porn-addled brain. Yet I can’t shake the idea that something is so deeply wrong with me, that no wonder would desire me.

Want You To Want Me

DEAR WANT YOU TO WANT ME: As I am wont to do, WYTWM, let me start my answer to your question with a question: what, precisely, would you need to see from a woman to accept that she genuinely desires you?

I ask because you are hardly the first person to ask this question and – like most who do – it seems like the issue is less about being desired and more about seeing a performance of desire… one that you could actually accept as being genuine. Which is ironic, since the performative nature of it tends to imply playing someone’s feelings up to an absurd and unrealistic degree.

If I’m being honest, I think a lot of this comes down to three things that all tie together like horny snakes. The first is simply how you feel about yourself. The second is how you feel about sex itself. The third is not understanding the social context of when and how women express interest and desire and what that means for women.

The first is very simple: you don’t believe in your own desirability, and so you don’t accept evidence that isn’t presented in very specific and easily understood ways. What you’re essentially asking for �from women is for them to overcome your inner doubts, and to do so in such a way that your confirmation bias can’t override what you’re seeing.

The thing is: this isn’t going to help you. What you’re asking for is not just a form of external validation, but a form of external validation that is more costly for the women around you (put a pin in that…) and ultimately cannot do what you’re asking for. You’re hoping that sufficiently overt expressions of desire will finally convince you that you’re attractive and sexy and close that hole in the center of your being. It won’t, simply because that hole can’t be filled from the outside.

I’m sorry to break this to you, but there really isn’t any way for external validation to do what you need it to. Other people can’t make your self-limiting beliefs go away because those beliefs are precisely what they say on the tin: they’re self-limiting. You’re not being restrained or restricted by another person, you’re doing this to yourself. The call is coming from inside the house. Even if you found someone who put on a performance of horniness that would make Lisa Ann say “ok, that’s a bit much,” you would think it’s a joke, a prank or not even understand what they were doing.

Just do a search on Buzzfeed or Reddit or Tumblr or BlueSky for people telling stories about how they missed glaringly obvious signals that someone wanted to f--k them. Hell, I can tell you from personal experience that this happens: back in college, I missed out on multiple hook-up invitations, including one from someone who explicitly asked me back to their dorm rooms to watch porn with them, because I couldn’t conceive of the idea that they actually wanted to have sex with me.

But even if you do accept that someone might actually want to bang, that reassurance would only last as long as it took before your brain latched on to the smallest, flimsiest excuse it could find to negate everything. And it will find that excuse, because you’ll be looking for one. That’s how confirmation bias works – you pay attention and give credence to the things that confirm and reinforce what you already believe, while ignoring, overlooking or rationalizing away the things that contradict what you believe. And then the negativity bias inherent in humanity would ensure that those flimsy rationalizations hit five times harder than direct and unmistakable signs of lust.

You do this in your letter. You talk about being more sexually experienced than average, yet this just somehow proves that you’re not because… reasons. It can’t just be that someone can be attracted to you and want to have sex and then move on, they have to be with someone else because that other person is “better” than you. More desirable than you. Just more than you.

But consider: can you see yourself having a one-night stand with someone that you don’t then go on to date, without it being because someone else was “better”? Can you see yourself having a casual hook up with someone that is ultimately just about that person at that time, without it being a referendum on their desirability compared to others?

If you can see yourself  recognizing this truth about people you have f--ked or may f--k, why can’t you see and accept other people can feel the same way about you? It’s not that you’re some special visionary; it’s about how you see yourself.

This is why you have to change what you believe, rather than rely on other people to do it for you. If you don’t, it won’t change – not the way you hope and not for good. The next time you perceive a slight hitch or that someone else isn’t equally as overt or just isn’t interested, despite your being the hottest thing since World War III will bring it all crashing down.

What compounds this issue that the sort of behavior and signaling you seem to be hoping for often isn’t how women show interest. This isn’t biological, but cultural – specifically that society punishes women for being overtly sexual except in specific and “approved” ways, and even those are contingent on class, race and conventional attractiveness. Sabrina Carpenter caught s--t for weeks for the cover art for “Man’s Best Friend”, because it was not only overtly sexual but also submissive and not seen as “empowering”. The fact that it’s seen with her in a submissive role is “degrading”, even if a) that may well be precisely the kind of sex she wants or enjoys and b) the whole thing is symbolic of how she feels she’s been treated in relationships, rather than “this is how I like to f--k”.

But Sabrina Carpenter is a conventionally attractive white woman. Someone who isn’t one or all of those things experience very different reactions to overt displays of sexual confidence and desires. A sexually confident and forward fat woman is an object of ridicule – how could she possibly think she’s attractive? How funny is it that she’s horny? Black and Latina women who emphasize their sexuality in assertive, even aggressive ways get slut-shamed and told they’re being low-class – just look at how folks respond to black women in rap and hip-hop. Women who do sexual performance – including OnlyFans models, dancers and porn actresses – are accused of having daddy issues, drug addictions or otherwise being “broken” in some fundamental way. Meanwhile, their overt sexual behavior is treated as though it devalues and degrades them… despite the fact that they are doing so for the entertainment and desire of an audience that clearly wants to see these sorts of sexual presentations.

And not to put too fine a point on it… you indulge in this dichotomy as well. You try to de-emphasize the eroticism of porn by trying to remind yourself of the supposed darkness of it all – the drug addiction, the coercion, etc. – rather than just accepting it as a performance. If you can accept that Vin Diesel isn’t a former petty thief who became a government secret agent or that Jason Statham isn’t a retired super-spy and are just playing roles on screen, or that a ballet dancer isn’t actually a princess enchanted to be a swan, why is it so hard to accept that someone is putting on an over-the-top performance of sex for a paycheck?

And it is over the top; as porn performers themselves can tell you, the sex they have for themselves doesn’t look like what you see on screen – from the positions to the screams – any more than the fight scenes in a John Wick film look like fights in real life.  

But this ties into what I said about how you view sex and sexual desire – you clearly have conflicting and complicated feelings about sex and your own sexuality. For one, you refer to abstaining from jerking it to porn as being “clean” – echoing language of addiction and disease. It’s a mental framing that you’re harming yourself and the problem is the porn. But masturbation, fantasy or even porn aren’t inherently bad or harmful; the issue isn’t the porn, the issue is that you’re using porn to self-medicate, and doing so in a way that is causing you distress.

The same goes with splitting your sexual desires between the “unacceptable” and “bad” – those “deviant” desires, like casual hook-ups or group sex – and “good” ones in the context of a monogamous commitment. Leaving aside that group sex is hardly “deviant” or even unusual – sex with multiple partners is one of the top 7 most common fantasies – sex with a committed partner is no better or worse than casual sex or any other form of sex with consenting partners. Some may find it distasteful, sure… and they don’t have to have those kinds of sex.

But the fact that you call those desires “deviant” is, much like using the language of addiction around porn, the tell. You don’t need to justify having fantasies about participating in orgies; you can just enjoy them, for no reason other than because you think orgies are hot as hell. It’s fine!

The problem isn’t your desire, it’s the way you feel about sex, and that’s playing into your not feeling desirable. This internal conflict – that you want sex, and some of the sex you want is “bad” – means that you don’t feel that you should be desired, and it sounds a lot to me like you’re hoping that someone else’s overt desire for you will tell you that it’s ok to want these things too.

This is precisely why I keep saying that the call is coming from inside the house. The house is your head. It’s all in your head. And that’s where the solution has to come from as well.

You have to be willing to believe in yourself and your desirability first, without relying on someone else to give you “permission” to believe it. You have to be your biggest fan, the first and founding member of your own fan club and your number one hype man, regardless of what others think. You have to be willing to not just think you’re hot, but be unashamed and unapologetic of thinking you’re hot. Even when people disagree with you.

In fact, especially when people disagree with you.

And while I can already hear a thousand fingers reaching for hundreds of keyboards and touchscreens: no, this isn’t absurd, paradoxical or impossible. It’s simply recognizing that things can be, without the agreement, buy-in or approval of others. Popularity isn’t an indicator of quality – Justin Bieber has sold more albums than the Beatles and Fleetwood Mac. John Carpenter’s The Thing was panned by critics and a box-office disaster, but it’s heralded as one of the best, most imaginative and influential horror movies of all time.

If someone hates your favorite food, does that mean that you’re wrong and that food is no longer delicious? If someone tells you that the movie you love is, in fact, bad, do you stop loving it? Or can you simply accept that someone may not like that particular dish, that people cannot see what you see in a movie or enjoy what you enjoy?

The same applies to how you feel about yourself. Other people can disagree; they can have poor taste, they can simply not comprehend your sexiness, they can be deluded or just have different opinions… but their opinions don’t matter. Not nearly as much as yours does.

You can certainly bolster your feelings about yourself with affirmation and validation from folks whose judgement and opinions you trust. You may even take those people’s opinions into consideration if you feel like you want to make a change. But at the end of the day, the deciding vote and most important opinion has to be yours.

Once you start letting yourself accept it and believe it, then you’ll start actually seeing the evidence. And to be clear: the evidence was always there; you ignored it, dismissed it or handwaved it away when you didn’t believe.

Getting there is going to be hard, because it requires not just self-acceptance but self-approval. You have to be willing to fully acknowledge your good qualities, to gas yourself up, and own that you actually like yourself. You have to be willing to love yourself unabashedly and recognize that while some folks may not see your value, that’s their problem, not yours.

How do you get there? Well, to start with: engage with your body. Your body is your instrument, so learn how to play it. I always recommend learning how to dance, especially dances that engage your whole body, because dancing is a sensual and ecstatic experience. Knowing how to move, how to follow rhythm, how motion at one speed implies strength or dominance, while motion at another speed implies sexuality and sensuality – these remind you of just what you’re capable of.

The same goes with dressing well, in ways that resonate with who you are and make you feel like a sexy motherf--ker. Enclothed cognition is a thing; dress like you think you would if you were hot and you’ll be surprised at how hot you feel.

But you should do things that aren’t necessarily about sex, but do make you feel good about yourself, too. This is where having things that feed your soul, things that bring meaning and purpose to your life are important – it solidifies your sense of worth and value overall. Attraction and desirability, after all, is a holistic issue; a thin layer of sexuality isn’t going to be load-bearing enough to hold everything up if you don’t think you’ve got value in general.

And while you’re thinking about how you feel, don’t forget to think about how others feel… and more importantly how you can make them feel. Desire isn’t just physical, it’s emotional. If you can make someone feel good – whether through laughter, personal warmth, generosity, excitement, an experience, whatever – you become that much hotter in their eyes.

And that includes being willing to show desire, especially in subtle ways. A warm look in your eyes that suggest a particular hunger, a slight but confident smile, a gesture that’s deliberate but graceful and gentle, a soft touch that lingers just a second longer than expected… all of those are things that work magic on people.

Just as importantly: embrace what you like and what turns you on. Part of what made Prince – a short king and avowed weirdo – so goddamn magnetic was that he was unabashedly horny and sexual, and let that into his music and performance. Kiss, Darling Nikki, Get Off, When Dove’s Cry… none of these would have the impact they do if you felt like he was apologizing for his desires. If you think liking group sex makes you a freak, then fine, let your freak flag fly. It’s not deviance, it’s exclusivity – you have to be this cool to ride. Let other freaks know there’s someone they can get their freak on with. The less you treat your desire as something you have to make excuses for, the less you’re going to have to fight to feel desirable.

I’d also suggest that you look at work that’s written for women, especially that’s been written by other women. Part of why Heated Rivalry is so hot is that you’re seeing male sexuality and emotion being portrayed in ways that isn’t the objectifying, predatory way that shows up so often in pop culture. Women are seeing men being sexual and expressing that sexuality in ways that turns women on. Romance novels likewise will list volumes of the things that trigger and inspire desire in women, if you’re willing to invest the time and push past the trap of focusing on what men think women want.

Find your desirability in yourself, WYTWM, and you’ll start seeing that desire reflected outside of yourself… and especially in the eyes of many of the people you desire.  

Good luck.

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