DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’m a freshman in college and for the first time in my life, I’m in a place where I don’t know anybody besides my roommate. 

I was looking forward to this being an opportunity for me to redefine myself and finally start being someone confident, who’s social and popular and can talk to girls. I was looking forward to having a chance to really make some connections during the early days at freshman mixers, but I chickened out and just stayed on the sidelines instead. 

Later, when I had opportunities to go to parties and meet people there , I did the exact same thing and would just leave early, kicking myself for being too afraid to go up and talk to people.

Now that winter break is over, I want to make up for the mistakes I made and the opportunities I missed last semester, but I’m afraid that I’m going to just have a repeat of last time.

My problem is that I see people standing around in groups, and I don’t know how to join the conversations or how to talk to the girls I want to meet without being obvious or looking like a creep. How do I break into group conversations when I don’t know anyone in them, and how can I chat up girls without everyone else watching or getting in my business? 

Wish I Wasn’t A Wallflower 

DEAR WISH I WASN’T A WALLFLOWER: first things first, WIWAW: the point of parties, especially your freshman mixers is to mix and mingle. Most of you aren’t going to know each other, so it’s expected that strangers are going to join groups and conversations. Your joining a conversation that’s going on isn’t a social faux-pas, it’s the point of these parties. You don’t want to interrupt someone else if they’re talking, but coming up and listening and adding your own thoughts are absolutely normal in those circumstances.

Now that having been said, I understand that groups of people are intimidating. But the secret is: they’re actually a lot easier to handle than people think. In a lot of ways, they’re actually much easier to deal with than trying to talk to two people or one person on their own.

The key, especially if you don’t know them, is to treat the group like an individual; that is, you address the group of people the way you would talk to a single person. If they’re talking about, say, favorite Star Trek episodes, you could say “I couldn’t help but overhear what you were saying; did anyone mention Far Beyond The Stars? Because man, I think that was the best episode of any of the series…” From there, you direct your attention to people in the group as individuals as needed – someone asks a question or makes a comment that you can respond to.

If you don’t have an easy in at first – you don’t know what they’re talking about, but there’s someone in the group you would ultimately like to talk to – then what you want is very simple: address the group and introduce yourself. I’ve found “hey, I’m new on campus and I’m still meeting people and you all seem like you’re really cool, so I wanted to say hi. I’m $YOUR_NAME,” works incredibly well. You can then follow it up with “so, how do you know each other?” which will help you establish the relationships within the group, and give you an opportunity to see who knows who and who is a relative stranger.

At this point, the conversation will almost certainly start to take on a life of its own as folks either bring up how they met, or other topics come up organically. During this, when you’re talking with people, make sure that you’re spreading your attention around, addressing more than just the one hottie you’re hoping to chat with. As the conversation progresses and you become part of the group, it’ll be easier to start directing more of your attention to the person you’re into.

Now, if things are going well and they seem to enjoy talking to you, it’s fairly simple to just start talking to them. The thing about talking to groups is that it’s very difficult for folks to maintain a conversation with more than three people; any group larger than that tends to split in a 3:2 ratio. Unless one person is just holding court, this is almost certainly going to happen on its own.

However, if it hasn’t, then starting a side conversation with the person you’re looking to flirt with is fairly easy, and it’s an effective way of triggering that 3:2 split if it hasn’t happened yet. A callback to something they had said earlier or bringing up a topic that seems to be relevant to their interests is an easy and organic-feeling way of starting your conversation with her. It doesn’t need to be an elaborate setup or segue; all you really need is something as simple as “You said you were into $TOPIC, yeah? Check this out…”

At that point, you two are now chatting and the others are going to be having their conversations and they’re unlikely to be paying attention to you two. You can even use body language to create a sort of faux-privacy by turning to face the person you’re wanting to meet and turning your back to the rest of the group. This creates the feeling of separating off from the bunch and creating your own little space. And if the two of you are really vibing, the group is likely to move on without the two of you, giving you both room to chat without having to go anywhere.

There’s more you can do in terms of getting space or moving around the room to talk without being around the initial group, but for now, just getting comfortable talking to people – especially when folks seem clustered up – will go a long, long way to making it easier for you to meet people, make friends and possibly spark a little something special.

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 just lost my virginity, and I can’t stop thinking about how badly I might have screwed it up.

A casual female friend of mine and I to talking at a party, and then somehow we started making out, before ending up back at her dorm and we ended up in bed together. Now I feel weird because I felt good about losing my virginity, but I feel like I was an awkward mess who just made everything uncomfortable. 

When we started, I was amazed and excited that everything was happening, but then I got stuck in my head about not knowing what I was doing. I was really nervous and I feel like I was just fumbling around. I finished, but it was very quick and soon I felt bad that I popped so fast. I honestly don’t think it was enjoyable for her, and now I keep replaying everything I did wrong. Looking back I think I didn’t feel confident, I didn’t really know what I was doing, and I was so in my head that I’m not sure I was paying any attention to her or what I was doing, but I also don’t know if that’s the case or if this is about how I feel now.

Afterwards, instead of just being normal, I got weird. I asked her why she decided to sleep with me, which sounded insecure and pathetic even as it was coming out of my mouth. I don’t know what I was expecting her to say, but it clearly wasn’t a good question. She explained that the making out was nice and she knew that I was a virgin, and while she wasn’t mean, things felt awkward and off in a way that made my stomach drop. I felt like I should go instead of sticking around, so I made an excuse about needing to get to an early class and left. 

Now I’m stuck with this horrible feeling that I made her uncomfortable — during the sex, after it, all of it — and that she probably regrets sleeping with me. I feel embarrassed, inexperienced, and like I exposed parts of myself I didn’t mean to. I can’t tell if I crossed some line emotionally or if I’m just spiraling because this was my first time and I had no idea what to expect. 

Now I’m an absolute mess. I don’t know whether I should apologize, reach out, or just leave her alone so I don’t make it worse. Mostly I feel stupid and ashamed, and worried that I turned what should have been a normal, imperfect first experience into something she now wants to forget.

Did I mess this up beyond repair, or is this just what an awkward first time feels like?

— Can’t Stop Replaying It

DEAR CAN’T STOP REPLAYING IT: Hey, I understand how uncomfortable this all can be, CSRI. On the one hand, you did something you really wanted to do, but on the other hand, you are having a hard time feeling good about it because you feel like you made a mess out of things. So now you’re dealing both with not being sure how to feel about yourself and worrying that you made your friend feel uncomfortable or even used, and that, in turn, is making you feel worse about yourself.

So, I’ll talk about the awkwardness and the why of it all, but let’s do the immediately important stuff up top. I think a big question is: do you regret having had sex, having had sex with her specifically, or is this ultimately about making things bad for her?

Based on what you’ve said, it sounds more like the latter – that you’re having messy and complicated feelings because of how you made her feel. It sounds like – and maybe I’m off base here, you’ll have to tell me – that this was something you wanted but the level of self-consciousness got in the way. Now it seems like your worries about your, er, performance, in bed and after, are retroactively coloring your memories. That’s leading to a lot of complicated and messy feelings and worrying that what you did made things bad or unpleasant for someone you like, and this makes you a bad person.

If that’s the case, then I have good news: you’re not a bad person and this is something you can recover from. The important thing is very simple: don’t let things linger and go unsaid. The longer you let things go without addressing them, the more the awkwardness and discomfort has a chance to build. If there’re misunderstandings or miscommunications, not addressing them leaves room for those misunderstandings to grow. Nature abhors a vacuum, and things will rush to fill that empty space. When the vacuum are the things going unsaid, what often fills that space are other people’s assumptions… and those often get filtered through the negativity bias we all have.

The good news is that addressing the awkward destroys the awkward. So, here’s what you need to do: text your friend and tell her you want to apologize for getting weird after you two hooked up. Generally, I’d recommend telling her that you want to apologize in person, but if you’re worried that you wouldn’t be able to get the words out, or that you’d say the wrong things in the moment, you can do it over text.

The goal here is to help her understand what happened afterward.  This was about you, not anything that she did. You got in your own head about it being your first time, that you feel weird and embarrassed about not being good in bed and worrying that she had a bad experience with you. Let her know that you are grateful and appreciative, and that you feel bad because you didn’t want this to be a bad experience for her, that you were worried that she regretted everything and you were only making things worse. You understand that leaving as abruptly as you did was the wrong call; you let your fear that she thought she had made a mistake and that were making things awkward get out of hand and, as a result, you made things more awkward.

Let her know you are sorry for how you behaved after, and that you would like to make it up to her. Then the ball is in her court. She’ll undoubtedly have things to say about it, and you should let her have her say without complaint or comment…  but I suspect that it’s not nearly as bad as you think. I suspect that, once you talk things through with her and work things out, things won’t be nearly as bad as it feels now. You’ll still feel like “I could have handled things much better than that,” but it won’t be “I am the worst person in the world and should never talk to anyone ever again.”

Now, that being said: I think a lot of your angst here comes down to the spontaneousness of how it all happened. I think if you and she hadn’t just gone straight from making out at the party to sex at her place, the experience would’ve been different. You mention that she knew it was your first time, so clearly, she knew you were a virgin, but it doesn’t seem like you two talked about what it might mean. From what you’ve described, it sounds like she knew that this was going to be more for you, than for her. That doesn’t mean that she wouldn’t enjoy things; good sex is as much of the mind as in the body. While maybe the actual intercourse wasn’t going to be the best she ever had, many times the things around having sex with someone are what makes sex good. If she was someone who liked being someone’s first – which it sounds like she told you – then the knowledge that she was your first can be incredibly satisfying.

The problem is that if she didn’t say something along the lines of “don’t worry about me, let’s do this for you”, or if she hadn’t set your expectation that it would be ok for this to be all about you… yeah, I can understand why you would worry that you’re making it a less-than-enjoyable experience for her. If the two of you were caught up in the moment and didn’t stop to talk first, or you thought she didn’t know you were a virgin or that she had expectations too, then I can understand how you’d get lost in your head about it all.

I think if you’d talked about it a bit beforehand, you also wouldn’t be feeling so anxious when the glow of your first partnered orgasm faded and the post-nut clarity was kicking in. You’d be a lot more relaxed and able to enjoy the afterglow, and the odds of making things awkward would’ve been lower. Not necessarily zero… but much lower. And the awkwardness itself would be less crushing and more just mildly embarrassing and easily dismissed.

But here’s the thing: being horny tends to focus the mind on relieving your horniness; freeing up the bandwidth after means that all the things you were pointedly not thinking about come rushing back in. And if you were already having moments of “oh no, not yet, not so fast” as you were approaching the moment of orgasmic inevitability, then it’s really no surprise that your anxieties or worries suddenly kicked into gear. The anxieties you felt were as much about self-awareness and the feeling that the other person has expectations that you “knew” you couldn’t match.

(That’s not necessarily true; being a virgin doesn’t mean sex with you won’t be a good experience for them, but that’s a different subject for another time.)

This is why even a quick discussion would’ve helped; you wouldn’t have felt as much of a failure or that you were a bad lay if you knew that it was all ok. That this was so you could punch your v-card, rather than her expecting you to be Studly Goodnight.

So, after you’ve talked things out and cleared the air with your friend, my advice for you going forward is simple: slow your roll. This isn’t the last time you’re going to have sex, and the next time you do have the opportunity, you’ll benefit immensely from taking things at a more measured pace. When opportunities do arise, it’s worth taking a moment to say “here’s what I’m into, here’s what I like, how about you?” You also want to take time to focus on the holistic act, rather than just focusing on getting to PIV time. Making out more, doing more foreplay, more oral, more touching… all of this is going to make sex better and more enjoyable for both of you. It’ll also mean that if and when you do move to penetration, you won’t feel as frantic or rushed, and so you can be less in your head, more in the moment and more aware of your partner. Paying attention to them – before, during and after – will make sex so much better for the both of you. You’ll have already established a firm foundation of pleasure; this is simply building on it, rather than making it the goal.

So apologize to your friend and clear the air. That’ll help you both feel better now, so that next time you won’t be as lost in your own world and rapidly running out of oxygen.  

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 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