Am I Too Intimidating to Be Attractive?

Doc,

I’ve been wondering if I might be coming across as intimidating to women.

I’m a man in my mid-thirties who has never been on a date, despite receiving numerous compliments that many men would envy. Honestly, it’s almost a daily occurrence at this point. On paper, I tick several boxes: I’m tall, dark, and handsome, well-groomed, fit, have a great career, and a confident demeanor. I’m also seen as someone fun and safe to be around. I’m not spectacular by any means, but I’d say I’m well put together. My friends and acquaintances often tell me I should be having success in the romance department, yet I struggle to connect with women on a deeper level, if I even meet them at all. I’ve been told a few times that I might be intimidating and that women might be shy around me.

The thing is, I do get along well with women and have a circle of friends mostly made up of them. These relationships formed through my own efforts, as it’s easy for me to chat with women in casual settings, and I regularly hang out with a few. However, these friends are all unavailable, and I seem to have a knack for (subconsciously) avoiding women who might be available. These are often the ones who seem distant, and typically they have been around my age. I understand that women, like anyone, can lack confidence and may not always signal interest directly, but when their body language clearly indicates disinterest, I prefer to err on the side of caution.

There have only been two notable instances where women have been overt about their interest. One was at a previous job, where a woman frequently looked at me and occasionally smiled. She’d obviously told colleagues about her interest, because they would giggle or sneak a glance as a group whenever I was around. I didn’t get involved, and kept my distance after learning she was emotionally unwell. The other was recently at a meetup event at a local bar. While socialising, I caught the eye of a stunning woman who I’d seen a few times before, and she was looking directly into my eyes, scanned my body, and then made eye contact again, just like in dating articles and movies. I was completely taken aback. Aside from these moments, women often seem to ignore me as if I were invisible, avoiding eye contact or the opportunity to talk to me, and I don’t think I’d ever pick up on more subtle hints, such as proximity. There’s a woman at work that I’d really like to get to know, for instance, but while we have spoken a handful of times and she seems happy enough to be in my presence, there’s no clear indication that she may be curious.

I’m confident that once I start dating, I’ll have positive experiences and eventually find the right woman. However, I’m currently frustrated by the feeling of making up for lost time and struggling to get my foot in the door.

How can I address this potential issue and improve my chances of getting to know women better, especially when they seem aloof?

Just Too Much?

First things first, JTM: you need to let go of the idea of “making up for lost time”. There’s no such thing as “lost time”; this is just self-imposed pressure based on the idea that you “should” have been doing something before now. All this does is frustrate you and make you overly concerned with trying to rush through things, which will just trip you up by making you focus on all the wrong areas. “Making up for lost time” is a recipe for frustration and anger that will ultimately slow you down or stop you in your tracks – like getting how getting angry at a particularly tough boss battle or platforming challenge in a video game will make you worse at playing the game in general.

You weren’t ready or in the right place before. You are now. That’s not “lost time”, that’s “it wasn’t the right time”. Now it is, and you’re starting this part of your journey.

The next thing is that, to be honest, “intimidating” is one of those words I find frustrating in a dating context because it’s so vague and variable as to be useless. When a woman is being told that she’s too intimidating, what it usually means is either she’s not being – forgive the already dated reference – “very mindful, very demure” or else she’s more accomplished than the men around her and they don’t like it. When a man is being told that he’s too intimidating by other men, it’s frequently about being too good for those women, like a backhanded compliment. When he’s being told that by women… well, sometimes it means he’s coming off like he’s thinking about licking the inside of her rib cage.

Other times, much like “be yourself” or “there’re other fish in the sea”, it’s a platitude handed out by people who don’t know what to say, but feel like they need to say something. Ideally, something that’s vaguely complimentary. But without actual detail or context, it’s such a vague descriptor that you can’t really do anything about it. Are you so handsome that women don’t feel like they could talk to you? Do you come off like a celebrity and so people are afraid to approach? Do you have Resting Murder Face? Who knows!

If you’re worried about being intimidating, then I’d recommend paying attention to your behavior, especially your facial expressions and body language. Having open, relaxed body language and giving off personal warmth goes a long, long way towards minimizing the odds that you’re coming off as scary or standoffish.

But I want to zero in on something you said: “when their body language indicates disinterest, I prefer to err on the side of caution.” I see variations on this all the time from guys with little experience in dating and it frequently comes down to the old “I respect women so much I try to avoid them wherever possible.” I mention this because, quite frankly, I think a lot of the folks who say this aren’t necessarily the best judges of body language or signs of interest or disinterest. In fact, in many cases, I strongly suspect that this is a post-hoc rationalization of approach anxiety, rounding up a lack of screamingly obvious signs of interest to active disinterest.

This is often a sort of emotional self-protection for people who feel like they don’t “deserve” women’s attention or interest. It sounds absurd, but it makes sense when you think about it. It often comes from a place of fear – fear of being a creeper, sure, but more often a fear of confirmation. Specifically a fear of getting confirmation that your romantic or sexual interest is inherently insulting or repulsive. If someone expresses themselves in such an obvious manner as those two women you mentioned, then hey, they must be interested. There’s far less of a question. But if they’re not actively looking at you like they’ve been lost at sea for weeks and you’re turning into a cartoon turkey dinner, then they must be actively uninterested and so your trying to talk to them would be an imposition or an insult. Better, then, to never make the attempt and have your worst fears confirmed.

Here’s something I think you should ask yourself: how did you meet all these women you’re friends with? You say it was all through your own efforts and you have no problem chatting women up in casual settings. So clearly, you have no problem identifying people who might be interested in small talk, nor are you too intimidated to start a conversation with a stranger and reaching a point of being friends with them. This is significant because the skills you use to make friends – especially with people of the gender(s) you’re attracted to – are the same skills you use to find dates. The only difference is the intended outcome.

And it’s the outcome, I suspect, that’s what’s ultimately tripping you up. When you’re meeting these women in a more social, casual setting, you’re not thinking of it in terms of outcomes and goals. You’re just thinking in terms of socializing and small talk, nothing earth shaking but also nothing terrible happening if they don’t want to chat. When you’re hoping that maybe they’d like to go on a date or go someplace for quality naked time, however, you’ve created a situation in your mind where not only can you fail, but failure would have consequences. On the surface level, those consequences could be social rejection, but on the subconscious level, those consequences would be confirming that you’re beneath them and the very idea that you thought you had a chance is offensive.

I think the best thing you could do for yourself is work on getting into the habit of not thinking of “approaching” the women you’re attracted to and instead just starting a conversation. Treat it as a strict “you seem interesting, I’d like to know more about you” sort of exercise, where you just want to get to know them and what makes them tick. Because here’s the thing: most of the time? You know next to nothing about these women. You know you find them physically attractive, but that’s usually it. But because you’re attracted to them, a part of your brain assigns them greater value and import than they actually deserve. It’s that they’re only worthy of disdain, it’s that attraction isn’t a measure of someone’s value or status. For all you know, their idea of fun is launching baby raccoons in a trebuchet or giving out those religious pamphlets disguised as fifty dollar bills as tips. You, quite literally, don’t know if they’re someone who’s worth your time, your energy and any emotional investment from you.

I suspect that once you start disconnecting a desire for a particular outcome from just meeting people and talking to them, you’ll find that their body language isn’t one of disinterest but one that’s basically neutral. Sure, there will be people who absolutely are sending off don’t talk to me vibes – but often that’s not personal so much as being broadcast to the world around them. It’s not that they don’t want you to go away, it’s that they don’t want to be hit on by anyone. That’s perfectly fine and you should go ahead and respect their wishes. But I think once you aren’t investing your sense of self-worth in how the conversation goes, you’ll find that most of the women you think are being cold or aloof are just… there. Just doing their thing. And if they’re not interested in making small talk? Cool, you move on, no harm, no foul.

But honestly, every relationship starts with conversation. Just talk to people, be curious about them, get to know them and find out what makes them cool. Over the course of chatting, if you feel like you’re picking up a vibe from them, send out a low-key flirt like a sonar technician sending out one ping only. If you get a positive response – she flirts back – you can give a little stronger of a sign of interest in the form of a little more overt flirting a bit later. If she doesn’t respond or seems to go cold, you can dial it back and go back to making friendly chit chat instead.

If things do continue to go well, you can decide how you want to handle things from there. If it’s someone you think you’ll see again, you can leave on an emotional high note and try talking to her again the next time you see her and see how things go, or you can ask for her preferred method of contact (texting, Instagram, WhatsApp, what-have-you) and keep the conversation going later. If you’re not sure you’re likely to see her again, you can take your shot and see if she wants to go do $COOL_THING you were talking about doing this weekend.

But the biggest and best thing you can do for yourself is just get comfortable talking to women you find attractive without worrying about the outcome. The less intimidated you get, the less you invest in someone who hasn’t earned that investment from you, the easier it becomes to meet people. Some will be happy to make small talk but won’t want more than that. Some will turn out to be friends you hadn’t met yet. And some? Well, some lucky ones will turn out to be someone who is right for you and worth your time as a potential partner.

Good luck.

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Hey Doc, this is really strange and I don’t know where to start, but to get to the point I have herpes. Not oral which is common but genital which isn’t as common (HSV2).

I am well aware of the stats with 1/6 people having it or the fact that it’s higher in certain countries or demographics but that’s not why I’m messaging you. I got it because I recently lost my virginity (I’m 20). The woman I slept with was a hookup and she claimed she didn’t know, but she ghosted me after asking about it further. I feel awful, suffice to say, and I feel completely dirty, and to be frank, I feel unworthy for any woman. I feel like I don’t deserve to have crushes or desires and that any woman who would maybe like me will automatically be turned off because of how gross I am.

I could date women with herpes sure but seeing how few people actually know they have it (I think 80-90 percent) makes that difficult and quite frankly I don’t know where to look. Part of me just wants to say screw it and lie about having it and just take meds and use a condom, but I know that’s wrong because of the risk of transmitting it and putting any potential partner in the same situation I was in. But since there’s no cure and the massive stigma against it I just feel destroyed and that anything I do is in vain.

I’m a bit disorganized saying this but it’s just truly heartbreaking for me because I know so few women would want to be with me including one I have recently talked to and vibed with if I disclose that I have this.

Thank you for reading

-Infected

OK, I’m going to start off with my usual statement regarding the herpes virus: it’s a skin condition. It’s an uncomfortable one and one that’s unsightly, but it’s a skin condition and one that nobody even really thought about until the 60s. Consider how you would feel if you had a cold sore. Odds are, you’d be annoyed about it if you had a date coming up, but otherwise it’d be more akin to having a zit pop up at an inconvenient time. You wouldn’t be happy, but you wouldn’t be having this sort of “my life is over” reaction. You’d dab some Abreva or other over-the-counter topical treatment on it and hope it goes away in four days instead of seven.

Well, that’s basically the same for genital herpes. It’s unsightly and uncomfortable and it can be dangerous for a pregnant person to get infected. But otherwise? It’s just really inconvenient. The stigma is radically out of proportion to the actual impact of the virus and most of it comes down to the idea that it’s “incurable”. But the fact is that both forms of herpes are very common and most of the time, both of them are a non-issue. Many people who have HSV-2 never have symptoms, which is why so many in the population have it. It’s likely that your hook-up partner was telling you the truth when she said she had no idea. I suspect her ghosting you had nothing to do with her being dishonest and everything to do with the freak out you were having.

Right now, you’re reacting to the stigma surrounding herpes, not the reality, and that’s what’s making you panic. The problem is, this sort of freak out is part of how the stigma gets spread; treating having this virus like it makes you “dirty” and “unworthy” for having a condition that millions of people have is the issue. When you act like you’ve been cursed for some moral failing, then other people are going to follow your lead. So what you need to do right now is take a long deep breath, feel the fuck out of your feels, then acknowledge that this situation is less than ideal… but it’s not a life-ruining experience either. Quite frankly, an allergy to sesame seeds would have a much bigger and more significant impact to your life than this would. This just seems worse because it involves your dick.

You know how you talk about the stigma surrounding it? Well, now you’re contributing to the stigma. If you want to reduce or break the stigma around herpes, then that change has to start with you. You have to be willing to say “yup, this isn’t a big deal” in the way you live your life. You don’t need to be an evangelist for folks who have the virus, but you definitely should be one of the folks who say “enh, I’d rather not have it, but it is what it is.”

The first thing I suggest is going to your local Planned Parenthood, talking to a doctor or nurse there and getting a full rundown on what having HSV-2 actually means. Getting facts from a medical professional – not Doctor Google, not Doctor Reddit and not a loudmouth with an advice column, an actual doctor with a sex-positive outlook – will go a long way towards easing the panic you’re feeling. I would also recommend getting on valacyclovir or some other medication to minimize both the likelihood of future outbreaks and reducing the risk of transmission.

The next thing I would suggest is to watch this TED Talk by Ella Dawson about being diagnosed with herpes, what it did to her life and how she learned to handle it. She also has a number of valuable resources on her website, including links to her memoir and advice she has for people who find themselves in a similar position as she did. One of the things that she’s very clear about is that this didn’t ruin her life; in many ways, it made things better, especially since it meant that she learned to be more mindful in her relationships and her approach to sex. I think that your hearing about another person’s experiences and why it’s not the end of the world will help immensely.

The final thing I would suggest is that you need to take a second and think things through. You have herpes. It’s just a data point about you, not something that defines everything about you unless you allow it to. If you treat it as definitional, then other people will as well. If you treat it as just one data point – something you have to take into consideration the way you would take allergies to peanuts into consideration – then other people will understand.

Yes, there’re people who won’t understand. There always will be. But there’re people who also think that having a peanut allergy or a gluten intolerance or who can’t have dairy products is a sign of weakness or moral failure too. We don’t treat those attitudes like they’re correct and we should be ashamed for having those conditions; if anything, we tend to get pissed at them for being assholes.

But pretty much everyone who’s sexually active has likely been in contact with someone who has HSV-2 without realizing it precisely because of this stigma. It’s the stigma that makes people less likely to disclose, less likely to recognize an outbreak when they have one and less likely to go to the doctor when they do. It also means that the people who do contract the virus are less likely to take necessary precautions to limit exposure and transmission… thus spreading the virus even further.

Now I want to be fair to the folks who will avoid dating you because they don’t want to get exposed to HSV-2. That’s not unreasonable; it’s not like having it is a great time with some minor drawbacks. It’s fair for people to say “ok this is a deal breaker for me,” just as it is for people to say that about dating someone with an inconvenient schedule, or whose politics or religion aren’t compatible or literally any other thing that they choose to filter people over.

The ones who decide that they don’t want to date you are people who are demonstrating that they’re not people you want to date. You want to date someone who understands the risks – which, with treatment and protection are low – and that they’ve been facing the risks before without realizing it. Sex is a full contact sport, after all, and it comes with risks. Anyone who has sex is accepting that these risks exist. We all do our best to minimize them wherever we can, how we can, to find a level of risk we find acceptable… but the risks are always there. They’re never zero.

Because here’s the thing: someone who’s worth dating is someone who is going to understand that this isn’t a big deal and isn’t going to act like you’re Ebola Eddie or Tuberculosis Ted. Someone who’s going to reject you because of this one aspect of your total self is someone who’s wrong for you. And while that can sting, it’s far better that they self-select out of your dating pool before they find out that they have herpes – likely from someone else they’d dated before you, especially if you’ve been careful about minimizing exposure and transmission – and blow up in your face about it.

I don’t expect you to turn around and be ok with having herpes right away. You’re going to need some time to process things. But right now, a lot of that fear is just fear, formed out of a lack of information and an abundance of misinformation. Taking time to educate yourself and seeing that you’re hardly alone is going to be the first step towards changing how you feel and making your life better.

It’s scary right now, I know, but it isn’t nearly as bad as it seems. You will feel better. Things will be better. You’ll be ok. I promise.

Good luck.

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This post was previously published on Doctornerdlove.com and is republished on Medium.

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