How Do I Get a Life?

Dear Doc,

I (25,M) am single and have been for years. My only “real” relationship was with a girl I dated my junior and senior years in high-school and that’s been it. Since then I’ve graduated from college, got a job, got an apartment and that’s it. Since then my life has been a cycle of working, lifting at the gym and playing video games alone at home. All my friends from college are spread out around the world from me so I only “see” them through Discord or Instagram and my friends from high-school all got married, had kids and became MAGA Republicans.

What I’m saying is that I don’t have anything resembling a life, social or otherwise. The problem is that I’m introverted and I’ve been a homebody for so long that I barely go anywhere or do anything and when I do, I can’t bring myself to talk to anyone.

I’m tired, I’m lonely, I’m sick of feeling like a loser who just numbs himself with Fortnite and weed. With the understanding about my introversion and everything, how do I actually go out and get a life?

Stuck In The Doom Loop

At the risk of sounding flippant, SITDL… you go out and get one. To quote Avenue Q:

There’s a life outside your apartment
and you’re only gonna see it if you leave.
There is cool shit to do,
but it can’t come to you.
And who knows, dude,
you might even score!

I realize this all sounds incredibly simplistic and reductive, but it really isthat simple. 99% of having a life is getting outside of your apartment and just messing around and seeing what sticks. But you have to take an active hand in the messing around and sticking part, instead of hoping it just happens.

One of the things that folks don’t realize and often don’t want to accept is that who you are is what you do. By which I mean that much of how we define ourselves and our identity comes from what we choose to do and what we choose not to do. And it is a choice; while there can be a lot of challenges or hindrances, much of changing your life really comes down to being willing to make different choices and to make them consistently enough that they become what we do.

Being a homebody, for example, is a choice. It’s an easy choice and one that is made easier by modern convenience, as well as being an introvert, but it’s a choice you make every night when you decide to stay home instead of doing literally anything else. It’s also a choice you make when you decide that the friction of making a different choice – from your social battery to just finding shit to do – is more than you want to deal with. It just feels like it’s not a choice because you’ve decided that you don’t want to endure the friction and push through it.

Getting a life is going to require developing the skill of dealing with and getting comfortable with discomfort and friction, and at the risk of sounding like an old man demanding kids get off his lawn… that’s not really popular these days. I can’t count the number of memes I see on a daily basis that say things like “nothing feels better than canceling plans” or “sorry, my anxiety says I can’t go out tonight”. These sorts of joking-but-not-really memes and posts are ultimately about creating permission structures to not do things, even when the people who post and share them will turn around and complain about how dull their lives are or how rarely they see their friends.

So while the first step is to go outside your apartment, the second step is to stay out, even when you feel like maybe you don’t want to. “I tried this once and it wasn’t everything I wanted, so clearly it didn’t work” is something that I hear a lot from people in similar circumstances to you, and honestly, this circles right back to getting comfortable with friction. Not every choice is going to work out the first time around; sometimes the answer is to keep trying to see if things change, and sometimes the answer is to pivot to something else.

What I would suggest, especially since the life you’re looking for is one that eases your loneliness, that you focus on finding community rather than necessarily tasks or hobbies. Part of why there’s a male loneliness epidemic is that need, not just for friends, but for being part of something that’s bigger than yourself. Being part of a whole, surrounded with people who are just as invested and interested and passionate about things, who come together to be greater than the sum of their parts. That longing for community is precisely why there are so many redpill grifters and fascist enablers and why they’re so seemingly inexplicably popular: they’re selling community. Part of what drew me into the PUA scene and kept me there for as long as it did, back in the day, wasn’t just a desire to learn how to get better with women. It was learning how to get better with women with other guys who were a lot like me. I had a community of bros to hang out with, hit bars with and talk about women, dating and sex, and quite honestly, it felt really, really good.

At the same time, it’s also part of what made being part of the League of Extremely Ordinary Gentlemen and the Spill.com crew such an important time in my life; I was part of a community and every podcast recording was like a weekly party with my friends.

One was a lot healthier than the other (except for my liver…), but both filled a very distinct need in different ways, especially at those particular times of my life.

So, I would recommend starting by looking for community – and to find it by starting with what that community has coalesced around. That can be tricky, because, again, you need to be willing to deal with the inherent friction of doing so.

I would suggest focusing your search based around what kind of community you would want to be part of and what kind of overall goals and focus it would have. If, for example, you feel like you need more meaning in your life – like you’re doing more than moving numbers from one part of a spreadsheet to another – then looking for a community focused around politics or a social goal is a good idea. Taking part in a community focused on civic improvement, helping the unhoused or supporting the elderly, for example, will not only mean finding like-minded people but also feeling like you’re doing something that matters. That alone can be a pretty heady cure for feeling like you don’t have a life.

But sometimes that may not be where you want to start. You may decide that you’d rather start with something a little less lofty, which is absolutely fine.

You may instead decide to try picking up a new skill, and to use that desire to learn as your entry point for finding community. It could be something practical, like learning how to sew and mend clothing, learning to cook or a new language. Or you may decide that it’s time to learn how to play a musical instrument, take up stand up comedy or some other form of creative expression. These are all great options and have a number of potential pay-offs beyond making your life more well-rounded and satisfying.

That may not necessarily be the answer either. But again, this is where learning how to deal with friction comes in.

In fact, the advice I typically give – find ways to leverage your passions and interests to do them in public, with other people who also share them – is one of the ways to deal with that friction; it’s a way of making it easier to find new things to do and people to meet. But it still requires that you actively participate in making it work, rather than hoping that you’re going to find a meetup dedicated to old-school LAN parties or in-person fighting game tournaments or whatnot. Sometimes you’re simply not going to find a perfect 1-to-1 match for your hobbies or interests, for any number of reasons. It could be that you live in an area where the demographics work against you. If you live in a small town and you have niche interests, you’re going to have a harder time finding as many people who share it. Or you may find people who share your interests, but the community they have created is one that is anathema to you and your values; it doesn’t do much good to find a meetup for, I dunno, bonsai aficionados, if that community’s core values include dehumanizing and degrading LGBTQ folks or supporting ICE’s deportation efforts.

If and when that happens, then you have three choices. One is to give up, which leaves you with a status quo you’re not happy with. The second is to pivot – experiment with new hobbies, try new things and see what’s out there. This, again requires that willingness to tolerate friction, because some of the new possibilities are going to require active investment to acquire them, much in the way that most people have to work to acquire a taste for beer or whiskey or exotic foods.

The third is to build it yourself.

This is something that tends to get a lot of pushback when I bring it up; quite a lot of people don’t think it’s fair that they have to invest this much effort to have a life or community, especially with so many other demands on their time, attention and energy. And to their credit: they’re right. It’s not fair. It’s not fair, because fairness has nothing to do with it. It simply is. If the thing they’re hoping to find doesn’t exist and they want it to exist, then someone has to build it, and if nobody else has already, then they’re going to have to be that someone. It demands time and effort, and those mean taking time and resources away from other things in their lives. That can be a hard decision to make, and lots of folks will decide that’s a choice they don’t want to make. And that’s valid. But the consequence of that decision is that the community, group or whatnot will still continue to not exist.

The last thing I would suggest is to look to ways to bring people together. This could be as grandiose as political or charitable organizing, but it can also be as simple as focusing on where you live. Consider, for example, how many of your neighbors do you actually know? You may know them to nod at, but what do you know about them besides that? Perhaps a good starting point would be something as simple as knocking on doors and telling people in your apartment complex that you’ve decided you’re throwing a cookout and inviting them to it. Nothing brings people together like food, after all, and this can be an excellent building block to creating a community right where you live. Make it a regular thing, and you open up the possibility of helping everyone who lives near and around you grow closer together and become the sort of community that folks say doesn’t exist anymore.

There are a whole host of options for you. But every single one of them first means that you have to step outside your apartment and you’ve got to open the door.

Good luck.

***

Dear Dr. NerdLove:

I’ve read a number of your columns about how to be someone else, but do I really need to change? I’m the sort of person who’s painfully self-aware, so I know that I’m not a mainstream kind of guy. I know I rub a lot of people the wrong way and I’m not well liked because of who I am and what I’m like. This isn’t me just beating myself up, it’s objective fact. It doesn’t bother me that I’m very iconoclastic for lack of a better term, but I won’t deny that it gets lonely. It doesn’t help that I have an older brother who’s precisely the sort of person everyone gets along with and is always able to fit into whatever group he decides to join. That’s not me, but maybe it should be?

What do you think, Doc? Where do I find the balance between being steadfastly myself and changing so I can stop feeling like the guy who’s always on the outside looking in?

Nose Up Against The Glass

At the risk of sounding like I’m being sarcastic: this is actually a really good question, but I’m going to respond with a question of my own: do you like yourself? Think on that for a second while I go off for a moment.

I know I talk about how change is possible and how the “you” are a concept that’s always in flux. I talk about being your authentic self, and I also talk a lot about how people can change themselves to improve their overall lives, especially their social lives. And I’m well aware that this sounds like an inherent contradiction; after all, what does it mean to be your authentic self if you’re trying to change? Doesn’t that mean becoming inauthentic, or changing to be what other people want?

Well, the very unsatisfying answer is: yes and no. Allow me to explain.

In my general experience, there’re two types of people who do the best, socially. One are people like your brother – people who are able to be whomever they need to be in order for other people to like them. These people tend to be incredibly popular, well-liked and are often held up as an example to be followed… especially if you have parents who say things like “why can’t you be more like…”

The other are people who have decided to be absolutely themselves with their whole chest, come hell or high water. They have made the decision to do this, even to the point of a social cost, because they have taken a very “people will like me for who I am or they won’t” position and are willing to own the outcome. They tend to be fairly polarizing – you love them or you hate them – and they are ok with that. This means that they won’t have the advantages or social benefits of the former, and it means that a lot of their life is very lonely; there are a lot of folks who may like them and that they may like but at the end of the day, they don’t mesh, no matter how much they may wish they did. However, when they do find the people who will vibe with them, those people are their ride-or-dies.

You can see a lot of both types in pop culture and the entertainment industries. There’re musicians who are broadly and generally popular and there are ones who are very polarizing but who have almost cult-like fandom for their willingness to be absolutely themselves. You can see it in actors in TV and movies, in best-selling authors vs. more niche mid-listers and so on. Everyone reading this probably had at least two or three names pop up right away.

Now, while I know that this is going to sound like I’m pointing you towards the latter, the fact of the matter is that both of these ways are equally valid for the folks who choose it. A lot is going to depend on what you need and who you are. And quite frankly, both types will tend to look at the other with varying degrees of envy. The broad popularity tends to be shallower popularity, and it often comes at the price of being more subject to the winds and whims of fashion and trends. The latter are polarizing, and often have a hard time outside of their niche, especially if they’re the sort that isn’t necessarily concerned with “fitting in”. That can not only make it hard to find their people, but it also means that they’re more likely to have a lot of folks who really dislike them. That can take its toll, even if you’re incredibly iconoclastic. And it’s not unreasonable to envy the ease at which the former move through life, or the tight-knit team of the latter.

And that brings us back to what I said at the start.

I’ve asked whether you like yourself, and I’m going to ask another question once you have an answer: why? Why do you like who you are, or why do you not like who you are? I ask because this can tell you a lot about what way you may want to go, if any. If you like who you are, then the question becomes whether you want to change that in order to try to find a broader level of acceptance and popularity.

If you don’t like who you are, and you can put your fingers on why and how, then the question becomes what your goal is in changing. Is it to be more satisfied and secure in yourself, or because of how others feel? Is it because there are things about yourself that you feel are bad – antisocial or negative tendencies, dark impulses you wish you didn’t have and so on? Is it because you feel like you push people away?

The point isn’t that change is bad and you should be yourself no matter what, or that you should change and improve yourself instead of assuming that you are locked into being who you are now. It’s to understand what it is you are looking for and what you want to be different. It’s great to be your best, most authentic self… unless that authentic self is an awful and hurtful person. It’s great to be popular and broadly influential and appealing… unless and until that popularity comes at the cost of your core self and identity and the understanding that this only can go on for so long.

As a general rule, I’m a big believer that it’s better to be a few people’s shot of whiskey instead of everyone’s cup of tea, especially in your social life. But being said shot of whiskey doesn’t mean not being willing to address things in your life and about yourself that are net negatives or causing harm, whether to yourself or others. Being polarizing means being true to yourself, even if it’s going to turn some folks off; it doesn’t mean you can’t improve and grow or change.

All of which is a long-winded way of saying: change isn’t inherently good or bad, but any change should be in the name of understanding what you want the end results to be and why. Change for the sake of changing and being different isn’t going to help if you aren’t conscious and mindful of why you’re doing it and how. Are you trying to change to be the best version of yourself, or changing because you feel like you’re supposed to? Are you trying to make yourself better, and if so, by whose definition? Just making things be different isn’t necessarily going to solve whatever issue sits at the core of feeling like you should change; it just rearranges the furniture and often leaves a bigger mess behind.

It sounds to me like you generally like yourself and understand yourself. I understand that you feel left out – the guy on the outside looking in – but I think you would do better to think of yourself as being strongly flavored. Not everyone’s going to like that flavor, but the people who do are going to love it. So while I think change can be good for you, I think it should be in the direction of making it easier for you to find the people who want that strong flavor, and for them to find you.

Sometimes the issue isn’t that you’re on the outside looking in. Sometimes you need to realize you are on the inside; you’re just waiting for others to find their way to the door so they can join you.

Sounds to me like maybe the change you need to make is making sure that door is open and ready to invite folks in.

Good luck.

—

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