How Can I Date When There Are Better Men Out There?

Dear Dr. NerdLove,

I think I have an intro you haven’t seen before, so I hope I’m special with this. I’m writing in because I’m triggered by a song. Ok maybe not really but it overlaps with what’s already bothering me and since it’s all on TikTok anyway it seemed like a good start to get your attention.

So here goes and I hope this makes me sound less crazy than that lede. I’m (m/24) single and have been for a couple of years. I had one serious relationship that started in college and ended when she left me for another man. I know what you’re about to say (long time, first time) so I will tell you that yes, she told me to my face she was leaving me for this specific other guy. No question about it. That wrecked me pretty badly and it was only recently that I’ve started trying to pull out of that spiral.

My problem is that while I’ve been trying to get my head back in the game, I’ve been looking at a lot of dating advice content online. Yours, obviously (and while I’m here are you ever bringing back the podcast?) but also a lot of people on TikTok and YouTube and so its not really a surprise that I get a lot of other advice playing in my FYP. And one of the themes that keeps standing out to me, something I see over and over again, is about how women will be on the look out for the upgrade and will leave you for him if you don’t do everything exactly right or actually have those things or sometimes even if you do. And it doesn’t help when I see folks telling me that Ryan Gosling was born, not made or that Brad Pitt was born not made and that you can’t “become” them so you have to learn how to compete or settle for being alone. And yeah, stuff like status, money, hypergamy and all that comes up pretty regularly and sticks in my brain.

I know you’ve talked about all of this before but here’s my personal twist on things: that guy my ex left me for is the exact type of guy that all these coaches say women want. He was literally 6’5, working in finance, had family money and all that. No idea about the blue eyes. I’m 5’7, at the time I was working part time to pad out my loans and meager scholarships and trying to get just enough course credits to graduate and hopefully get on the path to a good job and all the rest of that. And my ex left me for this other guy because in her words “he was aligned with her goals and I never would be and nobody would want what I could offer compared to that.”

This wasn’t me being depressed and doomer-y about the break up, this was what she actually said directly to me after she told me. And just when I thought I was getting over all of that and thinking she was just a (not gonna use that word but you know the one), well here comes all the people telling me she’s completely correct. Even the women.

What am I supposed to do about all of this? I’m going to be lucky to be middle class if everything goes right and I don’t take on more debt to try to get a post-grad degree. Do I have to accept that I’m going to be a dateless drone, a maidenless manlet until either surgery exists to give me an extra 7 inches and I somehow start and sell a company to Google? I don’t WANT to believe this stuff and yet my experience says otherwise. Talk me off this ledge Doc, I really hate it here.

You’re (Not) The Best Around

Reading your letter, YNTBA, I’m reminded of the words of Sophocles when he said “sometimes people are just assholes.”

Pretty sure he was talking about your ex when he said that, honestly.

So I want to separate this out into two distinct and separate issues: your ex and the shitty advice you’ve been mainlining since then.

Let’s start with your ex. She was an asshole.

Frankly that’s all that really needs to be said, and it’s a perfectly good reason to completely disregard her. You would do a hell of a lot better to just picture yourself having that final discussion and saying “fuck you and the mustache you rode in on” before slamming the door in her face than going over what she said to you when she dumped you. What she did – dumping you for another guy (and under the circumstances, probably cheating on you with; sorry) is less significant than the how.

Leaving you for someone else? That sucks, but it happens. Not every relationship starts after the previous one ends cleanly. Sometimes there’s overlap – by circumstance, by carelessness, by coincidence, by malice and sometimes by necessity – but it’s far less relevant than most people think.

The parting shot on the way out the door, telling you not just who, not just why, but how he’s better than you? That was cruelty for cruelty’s sake. That was someone who wasn’t content to leave the relationship; she wanted to draw blood when she did it. She wanted to hurt you with this. Why? I don’t know. Maybe she resented you for having to work instead of spend time with her? Maybe she just always wanted to marry into money like a 30s romantic screwball comedy and was pissed that you weren’t her dashing tycoon in disguise. Or maybe she was just an asshole with a mean streak and wanted to get one last shot in before she went.

Regardless, as much as I know that break up hurt – it was calculated to wound – the way that she went about doing it should be enough to tell you that this was someone whose opinion should be given exactly the amount of consideration it deserves. Which is to say far less thought than you’d give to whether to by the six roll pack of toilet paper or the twelve pack. She was an asshole and life is too short to give even a moist fart about what an asshole thinks about you.

The problem is that her goal worked; that last little barb went deep and embedded itself in your soul. And like a barbed hook, you don’t want to try to pull it out; that’ll just tear things more as it goes. You want to push it all the way through – which hurts, but hurts far less and does less damage in the process.

…ok so maybe that metaphor got away from me. Point being: you’ve been trying to pull the hook out and it’s snagging on things and causing more pain. That’s what these dating coaches, podcast bros and masculinity “influencers” have been doing to you; they’re the barb in the hook, catching at your skin.

Nope, metaphor’s still weird.

Anyway.

Your ex is your past and she should be consigned to the void like she deserves. What you need now, is to recognize that the only reason you’re giving any of these dudes (and ladies – God knows there’s plenty of money to be made by the pick-me crowd) any consideration is that they’re playing precisely to the wound left by your ex. And that’s not a coincidence.

No, for real. This is what they do. Their whole schtick is to target people who, like you, have been hurt by love. They look for men who are heartbroken, who have emotional wounds that haven’t healed, insecurities that haven’t been addressed and target their pitch so that they hit in the exact spots where you’ve been hurt previously. And they do that by telling you in no uncertain terms that everything you’re afraid of? All those anxieties you’re feeling about not being “good enough” or not measuring up? That “I’ll be a maidenless manlet if I’m only middle class” worry? IT’S ALL TRUE, YOU ARE COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY SCREWED. And once they’ve revved up your fears to just before you start to redline by telling you in detail about all the ways women will judge and reject you… they make their pitch. Because they always have a pitch. Doesn’t matter if it’s Fresh N Fit, Andrew Tate, Kevin Samuels or any of the dudes sitting in their cars rambling about how unfair women are, they’re all just trying to get you upset so that you’ll buy whatever they’re selling.

This is part of the reason why folks will make a big deal about “naturals” or talk about how whatever Hollywood hunk is the current Chad Du Jour being “born, not made”. They want you to feel hopeless, they want you to be at your low point so you’ll be your most vulnerable and feeling like you have nothing left to lose so you may as well grab onto this particular reed.

(And it’s not even accurate. Ryan Gosling has been acting since he was single digits old. Spend that long learning and practicing how to convey characters and emotions and spark emotions in people and you’re going to be able to ooze charisma at will. It’s a literal skill that he learned!)

Now the reason why all of this sounds so convincing is incredibly simple. The first is that they’ve fine-tuned their pitch to an audience that is primed to hear the worst and so they play to their marks’ confirmation bias. The second is that the things they’re saying are all the things that men were told they needed to be in order to be “real men” for generations. They hit just a little harder because it echoes the rules and lessons that men have absorbed – both actively and passively through cultural osmosis – about how to be men. Never mind that those “rules” were for a culture that hasn’t existed for nearly 3/4ths of a century, nor that they were impossible to attain and apply even then. When you’ve been hearing the same things, over and over again and reinforced by people so many times that you could quote it in your sleep, those things tend to stick. They tend to burrow in like a tick. And they do nothing but cause more misery until someone deliberately uproots them.

And to give the devil his due: there’re definitely areas where they’re not actually wrong. They sprinkle in just enough about actual issues that men face to make it extra convincing and give the slightest hint of legitimacy. But it’s the fact that they play to your anxieties that means that you’re often not paying attention – not the way you should be. The discomfort you feel focuses your attention on what you think is the issue, rather than what they’re actually saying. And if you listen to what they’re actually saying and the message they’re sending… well, that should tell you exactly who these people are and what they’re selling you.

Because here’s the thing that you have to understand about these arguments about hypergamy or women looking for a man who has X, Y or Z: they’re telling you that women don’t experience love. The entire idea they’re pitching to young, anxious men, is that women don’t feel emotions or actually love their partners; all relationships are just means to an end. What affection they supposedly feel is really either biological programming or appreciating the comforts of life. Their partners are only the means to the end. And since women will never actually love you – are incapable of it, really – then the only way to win “the game” is to play it better than they do. And wouldn’t you know it, that guy just happens have something to sell to teach you precisely how to do that.

That’s their entire pitch. And for a small subset of men – the ones who, like the incels, let their anxiety and fear and frustration curdle into bitterness and resentment – that’s precisely what they want to believe. They want to believe that women are just biological robots who are responding to programming, not autonomous individuals with agency, preferences and an inner life. That’s the same mindset that dudes are throwing around when they talk about the 80/20 shit in dating, about the six sixes, or having to be “strong” so that women will “respect” them: they’re not people, they’re things. And you can “win” if you accept this and treat them accordingly.

As soon as you see that this is the bedrock of the philosophy they’re selling – along with their crypto grifts and side-hustle scams – the rest unlocks. It becomes incredibly clear just how full of shit they are… and the ones who aren’t full of shit are the ones who legitimately believe it, and that in and of itself is even more disqualifying. At that stage, you shouldn’t trust their input on what to order from the Dollar Menu, never mind how to live your life.

Hell, if anything, you should be insulted. You should be upset at those guys for thinking you’re that dumb and trying to grift you at a time when you’re particularly vulnerable, on top of trying to sell you the idea that women just aren’t as fully human as men.

Now, their arguments are pretty clearly bullshit on the face of it. If any of this shit was true, the human race would’ve died out before we ever could get a decent beef going with Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals. The idea that you have to be exceptional to get a relationship is obviously bullshit. Not everyone can be exceptional, by definition. Someone who’s rich or taller than average is quite literally an exception, not the norm. Economically, it would be impossible for this to happen, genetically it would be impossible… hell, socially it would be impossible.

But. Let’s accept that some people believe this. In fact, let’s go back to your ex for a moment. Let’s assume that, for the sake of argument, that she really was leaving you because this dude was rich and you aren’t and not that she was just trying to hurt you on the way out. But further, let’s say that you didn’t learn that she believed this when she dumped you, but that you knew this about her when you first met.

If you knew, from the moment you met her, that she sincerely believed that the only man she would be in a relationship with had to be rich and tall and that she held everyone else in contempt for even thinking they stood a chance with her… would you actually want to date her? Would there be any part of you that would find her attractive at all? Or would you just sit, dumbfounded, before laughing in her face after she laid that out for you?

This is the other part that the podcasters and influencers don’t want you to think about. They want you to think this is universal, that all women are that uncaring and mercenary, because otherwise they have nothing to sell you. Because they’re not selling skills. They’re selling a relief from fear. And that fear needs to be that every woman he ever wants won’t want him. Ever. So if All Women Are Like That, then you’re boxed in. You have no other choice than to play the game. After all, they’ve already convinced you that you’re NOT a Real Man unless you score the chick all your friends want to fuck.

And then they’ll turn around and sell your friends the course that’ll guarantee that they can steal your girl.

It’s easy to read this when it’s right in front of you, but it’s a lot harder to take onboard right away. But understanding the nature of the bullshit that’s being thrown at you isn’t what you need at this moment. What you need right now is to stop letting them throw bullshit at you!

The reason why this stuff is showing up in your FYP on TikTok and your recommendations on Instagram and YouTube is because you keep interacting with it. You’re watching it, you’re sharing it, commenting on it and otherwise telling the algorithms that this is content that resonates with you. So of course you keep seeing it. That’s why part of what you need to do is a social media cleanse. Start blocking those accounts as soon as they cross your timeline, refuse to watch them when you see them come up in the sidebar or the “for you” section or even just delete your entire account.

Oh, I guess then start over fresh, with a new email, if you absolutely have to.

But the important part is that you stop feeding your brain this bullshit just because it gets put in front of you. Especially when it hurts.

Then go outside. Not to touch grass, but to start reminding yourself that the real world is not the same as social media, that people don’t behave the way shitty dudes who only talk to other shitty dudes say they do and that people of all classes, sizes, heights, etc. date, fuck, fall in love, get married and have families all the goddamn time.

Nothing these chuds try to sell you will stand up to even casual scrutiny. So don’t even give them the time of day. Pay attention to what you’re feeding your brain and move on with your life. The pain will fade, the anxieties will ease and you’ll find love again, with someone who’s far better than your ex. And when you do? You’ll want to send her a thank you card, because the trash took itself out and cleared the way for you to find someone who’s actually special.

You’ll be ok. I promise.

Good luck.

***

Hey Doc,

I am back again yet a third time (Back in the Saddle/Still on the Horse). Thank you for taking the time to answer my previous letters, but I have yet another quandary that I am unsure on what to do.

After reading my second letter, you will remember that I met a girl who lived in Germany. For this letter, let’s call her Anna. Things were going really well between Anna and I when we were together and we were determined to make it work. Anna intends to move back to the States with or without me in nine months, so that gives me a definite end which is why I agreed.

When Anna went back to Germany, things changed. Anna’s father died a couple months ago, and they were really close. She later called to tell me that she feels that she still wants to be with me and she doesn’t want to see anyone else, but she is going through a lot emotionally and needs space. Because of this, we have not talked for several days.

Now that I have been back home for a bit, I ran into one of my other friends. Let’s call her Bella. After interacting a bit with Bella, I think she may be interested in something more from me than just friendship. I think Bella is a sweet girl and pretty cute as well, but I am not sure if that is a good idea.

When I talked to Anna last before she told me she needed space, I told her that I could not make her any promises. The truth is though, I really like Anna and I would welcome her back with open arms if she came back. But I also realize that I don’t know when, or even if, she will be back. A part of me also feels like I would be abandoning Anna in her time of need. I also wonder if it is fair to Bella if I go out with her while I still obviously have feelings for Anna. I feel like a piece of shit, because Anna always told me she was worried I would leave her for a prettier girl. But I also feel like I tried my best, and ultimately Anna is the one who is shutting me out.

What would I do in this type of situation? What are the ethics behind this?

Rock and Hard Place

OK, new rule: three letters like this in a row and it’s Chair Leg of Truth time.

You are about to profoundly fuck up your relationship for no good reason, and you’re going to end up with nothing to show for it. So let me give you the blunt truth here: this is entirely down to “if you can’t be with the one you want, bang the one you’re with”.

You’re frustrated with Anna, you’re horny, and Bella’s there. It’s easier to bail on a relationship if you know where you’re going to land, and you’re hoping that Bella is going to be your crash pad.

Here’s what’s going on: long-distance relationships are hard. International long-distance relationships are extremely hard. When they start long distance with minimal indication of when they will stop being long-distance, then you’ve added an entirely new level of difficulty to the mix, especially when you’ve already had your previous struggles with feeling wanted. This relationship was always going to be a high-effort affair for the both of you.

And now not only do you have a long-distance relationship with someone with no real way of knowing when you’re actually live in the same time zone, you’re feeling like you’re being shut out.

Except you’re not. This isn’t about you. This is entirely about the fact that Anna just had her world end and is trying to process some serious shit.

Now. My guy. I have been around this block a lot. Not only have I dealt with relationships that were derailed by the death of family members, but I’ve lost family members myself and I can tell you from extensive personal experience that nothing will change your perspective on life than when someone you’re close to dies. This is especially true when it’s a family member. And when the person who died is a parent? Congratulations, you are now going to have your bell rung and your entire world wrecked.

Losing a parent is one of the single biggest agents of change in a young person’s life; you are now confronted not just with the loss of someone important to you, someone who – quite literally – was there for your entire existence, but you also have to figure out who you are now that they’re gone. One of the biggest load-bearing pillars of your universe has collapsed, so what does this mean for you? This is precisely the sort of thing that makes someone want to hole up and cry for hours and try to figure out what the fuck they’re going to do now. And that’s very hard to do when you’re, say, balancing a brand new relationship.

I’m not surprised she needs time apart. Her available bandwidth is very, very limited right now and it’s going to be hard for her to deal with everything – not just her grief, but with her family, the practical arrangements, all of it – as it is. There’s nothing left for anyone or anything that isn’t the highest of priorities. And at the risk of sounding cold-blooded… your relationship is too new to really be that high of a priority.

It’s sucks, I know, and it’s hard not to take it personally. But it’s not about her not caring or not wanting to date you. It’s about time. You don’t have the sort of shared history and mutual investment that can only come over time.

She’s doing her best here, but she simply doesn’t have the time, spoons or anything left over for you. She’s going to be doing her best to keep treading water. And, as I said: this was always going to be a high-effort relationship from the start. This is why she said that she wants some space.

While I understand that you’re feeling left out right now, the fact is that you’re not really thinking about just how hard this is for her. Trust me: she would much rather be having virtual hangouts with you than dealing with any of this. I think you need to take a moment and be honest – if not with me, than at least yourself. You need to ask whether you honestly think that Bella’s an option, or is this because you’re feeling hurt.

Honestly? I think it’s because you’re feeling hurt. If Anna wasn’t in the picture, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

The main reasons why Bella is feels like an option is that the one you want is out of reach. It’s bird-in-the-hand vs. bird-across-the-ocean and oh look, isn’t it amazing how the person who’s actually there is more appealing? And also hasn’t recently made you feel rejected? And wouldn’t it be great if you could just bounce from one to the other without any real pause in between? It’s almost too good to be true.

Which should be enough for you to want to pump the brakes a bit and try to get some clarity. At the very least, you want to know what you’re actually doing and what you can reasonably expect as a result.

Part of it is going to involve being honest about whether you want to be with Anna or not. And right now, it seems like you’re trying to work your way up to actually breaking up with her and you don’t want to admit it.

Now, if you don’t want to wait on Anna, that’s entirely legitimate. Yeah, you feel like you’d be an asshole for doing this but – and I mean this sincerely – how long are you going to sit around being upset and sad in the name of Not Being An Asshole? There are no good times to break up with someone, and break ups always sting. But sticking around when you truly want out, just because you don’t want to be The Bad Guy is a mistake. Even under the best of circumstances, that’s a recipe for things going septic. If you don’t want to wait – and again, that’s a legitimate choice – then it’s better to end things quickly and cleanly than to let it drag out and for her to realize that you’ve been feeling this way the entire time she’s been mourning her father. Discovering that you have been just counting down the days until it was “ok” for you to say “I want to break up” is just going to retroactively make that mourning period even worse. So if you truly want out? Then do it as quickly as you can with as little unnecessary pain as you can. The clean break heals the fastest.

But if you are going to end it, don’t end it because you think you have a shot with Bella. End it because you wanted this relationship to be over.

If you realize that no, you actually want to try to make things work? Then let go of the idea that Bella is anything other than someone who gets your heart pumping and your gonads jumping. What you’re currently thinking about requires a more deft hand and a lot more experience than you have to navigate successfully. Getting hornt up over her is only going to lead to poor choices.

How long will it take before Anna comes back? Fucked if I know. Grief is different for everyone. But if you trust her and trust your relationship, then you should give her a chance to prove that this trust is warranted. And while Bella is tempting now, she’ll hardly be the last person in the world that you’re tempted by or who seems to be into you. This is just what’s right in front of you right now, not the last opportunity you’ll ever have.

While there may still come a time when you’ll decide that you’ve waited long enough, it doesn’t sound like that day is today. So don’t make serious decisions based on momentary temptation.

You’re the only one who can make this call. But you have to make it, one way or the other.

Good luck.

—

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

***

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