Doctor NerdLove understand that being shot down sucks. But you have two choices: bitch and moan, or deal with it like a man.*
If you go by a lot of the advice being handed out to guys about dating, you would think that getting dates and getting laid is simple: act as alpha as possible, remember that women are gold-digging, status-climbing whores who only want the highest status males (and will ignore, use and/or cheat on everyone else) and endeavor to give as few fucks as possible.
Of course, the unspoken problem is that for all of their protestations that they’re a guy who doesn’t care… they care a lot. And many of them are already feeling angry that they’re not getting the sex that they “deserve”, which makes them even more determined to score that 9 or 10 that they’ve been cut off from. So when that mix of that anxiety, pressure and entitlement issues starts to build, they have no way of dealing with being shot down. As a result, we get guys who respond to rejection or being Friend Zoned by freaking the fuck out at women.
The pattern is fairly simple:
Guy likes girl.
Guy works up nerve to ask out girl.
Girl says no.
Guy calls her a whore and a cocktease before going on to rant to his friends online and on Facebook about how women don’t appreciate a Nice Guy. For extra bonus points, they may include this in their OKCupid profiles.
Now admittedly, this is territory that I’ve covered before, but it’s been a subject that is fairly evergreen and recent tumblrs like Nice Guys of OKCupid and OKCupid Goldmine have sparked the conversation again over how hard guys have it in dating and it’s so unfair.
Now I will be the first to tell you: being shot down sucks. But you have two ways of dealing with it. You can bitch, moan and whine…
Or you can deal with it like a man1
♦◊♦
Fear Leads to Anger. Anger Leads to Hate. Hate Leads to Suffering.
Dating can be a maddening exercise in frustration, shredded egos and constant confusion and more than a little resentment; when you’re not socially gifted or are uncomfortable dealing with the people you’re attracted to, it can be even worse. It’s bad enough when you get anxiety attacks at the thought of approaching someone you’re interested in. It’s even worse when you manage to fight through the fear… only to get your heart torn out, stomped on and ground into the dirt. You can be absolutely convinced that you did everything right and still have no idea why you’re not getting a second (or even a first) date. It’s understandable that you’re going to feel frustrated, angry even. When you hold onto that frustration for too long, it begins to look for an outlet… and a target. It can feel only natural to want to lash out at the apparent cause of your misery – women.
“I JUST WANT TO BE LOVED, YOU BITCH!”
If you’ve bought into the ideas that women only crave status or material goods or that only “alpha” men get laid, that frustration is only going to confirm all of the most misogynist beliefs that these memes encourage. It’s so much more satisfying to put all the blame on women rather than to admit that perhaps you’re doing something wrong. By buying into the idea that women rule the social scene with an iron hand, queen bees lording it over the poor witless men who only want their due absolves guys of the responsibility for their own actions and own failures.
It also means that we don’t have to face up to how we really feel.
Men are still taught that expressing their emotions isn’t “manly” and that they’re supposed to keep things bottled up. And small wonder – trying to be honest about your emotions is conflicting, confusing and awkward and at times humiliating. It makes us vulnerable.
It’s human nature that we may try to avoid this feeling of vulnerability; we are afraid of how it makes us feel and we become afraid of that fear. Many of us—especially those who’ve been dealing with rejection and ostracism frequently have years of pent up frustration, and every rejection is just one more pebble into an already enormous pile of anger, recrimination and shame. We hate how that makes us feel and it can feel only natural at first to want to rail against the perceived cause of our pain.
Which is why I’m telling you to that you need to learn to embrace the suck.
Most, if not all of the frustration and anger that we feel at being rejected is misdirected; we aim it outwards because we feel as though it should be directed at ourselves, and that can be incredibly difficult to admit to. We’re pissed off at ourselves the most because… well, because we wanted to be perfect. We wanted to succeed. We have an ideal vision of ourselves and we failed to live up to it. Each rejection—or so we perceive it—is a judgement on us, and therefore a sign that there’s something inherently wrong with us as individuals.
Except that it’s OK to fuck up and to get rejected. Literally everybody does it. Everyone has gotten shot down by someone they were attracted to. Brad Pitt doesn’t go five for five when chasing after women. Neither does Ryan Gosling or Tom Hiddleston. Neither does Mystery or Style or Tyler Durden or any PUA you’d care to name. Neither did the various naturally gifted fellows I knew growing up who made it all look so damn easy, and whom I resented because for me it was so fucking hard.
It only seems like they have it easier because you’re comparing your unedited footage to their highlight reel. Behind every popular guy is a long line of women didn’t want to put up with their shit.
This is why you need to learn to be able to feel your feels, accept that you have them and then… forgive yourself for fucking up.
Learning to be willing to say “yes, this hurts and it sucks,” is an intrinsic part of learning how to get better with women because the follow up is “But it’s OK and I’ll recover and do better next time.”
Which leads us to the next part:
Take Rejection With Some Fucking Dignity
I’ve been rejected more times than I care to count. I’m willing to bet that I’ve been rejected more than most of you guys. I know every single impuse that springs up. You want to yell at her. You want to argue. You want to cry, beg or mope your way into changing the answer. You want to do anything other than accept that things just aren’t going to go the way you want. I have been there, done that and posted the angsty LiveJournal emo posts where I knew they would see it and printed the t-shirt.
Part of what changed things for me was learning that the best thing I could do was learn how to handle rejection with some grace and that the only truly acceptable response to being shot down is “Ok… well, thanks anyway.”
There’s almost literally nothing less attractive than someone who can’t take “no” for an answer. It’s a display of neediness and a lack of social intelligence that causes sex magically vanish into the ether alongside your dignity and self-respect.
(This, I might point out, is a key component of why guys get stuck in The Friend Zone. They don’t want to accept that they’ve been rejected and thus try to hang around—as “friends”—in hopes that if they hang in long enough and collect enough Friend Coupons, they can trade in that “No” for a “Yes”.)
Learning how to be able to take rejection without falling to pieces meant having to accept that there would be people that would not like me the way that I wanted them to, and there was nothing I could do to change that.
Paradoxically, this actually helped make me better at interacting with women. Y’see, a man who can take rejection with courtesy and a lack of drama is someone who is comfortable putting himself out there emotionally, and yet secure enough to know that a single rejection isn’t that big of a deal.
A guy who can take a rejection without letting it destroy him is someone who has confidence and self-assurance. It may not help him with that particular woman, but that attitude makes him much more attractive than the one who lashes out or stores away all of his resentment and bitterness only to unleash it later like a passive-aggressive squirrel storing hate nuts for the winter.
In it’s own way, accepting rejection without drama became remarkably liberating. Once I accepted that I couldn’t win everybody, I started to get over the fear of someone not liking me… and that in turn made me better able to recognize that my fear of rejection was part of a scarcity mindset. I was so hung up on getting this one person to like me that I made them the focus of my world and lost track of the fact that there would be other women out there—millions of them, in fact—and that if one didn’t like me, then there would be others who would. So why waste so much of my time and mental energy worrying about one “no” when I could get on with finding my next “yes”?
Incidentally, another aspect of learning to accept rejection with some dignity means understanding that while she is not required to give you the relationship you may want, neither are you limited to what she is willing to offer. It’s perfectly fine to walk away2 to a “Let’s Just Be Friends” response. If you don’t want to be friends, there’s no point to trying to force yourself to do so, especially if you’re the sort of person who can’t compartmentalize one’s emotions well. Some people will get angry at this: “So you just hung around because you wanted to date me?” It’s ok that the answer is “yes”… provided you were honest and up front about this rather than trying to be “friend” under false pretenses. Better to be straight forward.
Just understand that being friends isn’t the runner-up consolation prize for not getting the relationship; friends are fucking awesome, not the booby prize.
Get Away From The Internet Echo Chamber
There are days—-usually the ones that end in ‘y’—that I’m glad the majority of my formative years were spent pre-Internet. I grew up in the 80s and 90s, when the majority of computer network access one had were on the walled gardens of Compu$erve and Prodigy with occasional forays into the chaotic metropolis that was AOL and the wild west outposts of bulletin board systems. I didn’t have full internet access until I reached college, which meant my youthful idiocy was mostly fairly contained. But once I got to college, I had an ethernet connection and a WHOLE HOST of neurosis and insecurities that I was ready to unleash on the world!
This included an especially painful rant on being a Nice Guy caught in the Friend Zone on a personal website. It was full of the usual impotent fury, raging against how it just wasn’t RIGHT that the woman I was infatuated with stubbornly refused to fall in love with me (or, y’know, touch my penis. Whichever came3 first.) and this was a crime to cruel to be borne.
Fortunately for me, I had yet to discover Usenet and the web was in it’s infancy, which meant that unless you were added to Yahoo by hand, nobody would find you without a great deal of luck. So while I got the occasional ass-pat from my fellow travellers, my venting went mostly unnoticed.
At the time, it was frustrating, feeling like I was yelling into the void. My friends, much as they loved me, would only let me moan for so long before they’d tell me I was being an asshole. I would have loved to comisserate with my fellow prisoners about the fickleness of women. Now, with the harsh light of maturity, I’m incredibly greatful… because it means that I didn’t have my bullshit issues validated by what would have felt like the entire world. Not having the massive “I know that feel bro” circle-jerk It meant that I could vent… and then I had to move the fuck on.
These days though… well, there’s any number of subReddits, Tumblrs and forums where I could go and find other guys just like me – angry and confused and frustrated – where I could scream about how unfair it all was and how the system was rigged against us and I would find hordes of responsive people who felt exactly the way I did. But while this can feel empowering, having nothing but people who agreed with me also meant that I wasn’t going to hear the unpleasant truth: that ultimately it was my own damn fault and I needed to put on my big-boy pants and deal with it. Instead, I would be surrounded by people who agreed—yes, that istotally unfair. And the more that we could agree that it’s unfair, the more we could shift the blame away from us and onto others. That echo and amplification—that it’s unfair and it’s all women’s fault—only makes it easier to buy into other hateful ideas about women because… well, these are all people who I agree with and who feel the way I do and I’m not exactly hearing any dissenting voices, so maybe there’s something to it.
It’s incredibly seductive—after all, we do tend to like and respect those most like us—but it’s also limiting and, to a certain extent dangerous.
That cyber-balkanization—communities that self-select for specific viewpoints—would make it harder for me to get what I ultimately needed to hear because… well, I didn’t want to hear it. I just wanted people to validate my victimhood—even more than I wanted a solution to my problem.
It’s great to have a place where you can vent, where you can find people who understand you and have gone through similar experiences and who can offer you moral support. But it’s also important not to be seduced by the call of a uniform community that could prevent you from getting an alternate viewpoint that you may well need.
Quit Expecting Life To Be Fair
A key word that comes up over and over again is “fairness”. The idea that somehow things should be fair and equitable informs a great deal about how we relate to one another and how we perceive our interactions with people. A lot of guys, for example, will insist that because women supposedly have all the power in dating that it is somehow “unfair” for guys. The idea that men are “forced” to approach is somehow an injustice because in a truly just world, women would approach too.
Never mind that women are discouraged from being the aggressors for a multitude of reasons—it’s theperception that there’s an imbalance that places an unjust burden on men that matters.
The same goes to the supposedly disproportionate “risks” that men have to take by virtue of being the aggressors. It would only be fair for women to indicate their availability before we invest ourselves in trying to approach them, right? Right?
Let’s be honest: nine times out of ten, what we mean by fairness translates to “makes it easier for me to get what I want.”
Is it fair that men “have” to be the aggressors? No, not really… because “fair” never really comes into the question. “Fair” assumes that men and women are otherwise completely equal; it ignores that every interaction doesn’t occur in a vacuum and that interaction between men and women is informed by thousands of years of enforced gender roles, female subservience and views of male and female sexuality and interrelations that have only started to change in the last hundred years or so. The “risks” that men have to subject themselves to are frankly not equal to the ones that women face in return. To quote Margaret Atwood: “Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid men will kill them.”
Even if we ignore the subject of privilege4 , the things that guys so often complain about with dating as being “unfair” has less to do with “fairness” and more with “It would be nice if…”
Because yes, it would be nice if everybody – men and women alike – could tell in advance who was single and looking and who wasn’t. It would be nice if women felt as though they were more empowered to approach people they were interested in without fear of recrimination or even physical danger.
It would also be nice if I won the Powerball this weekend.
Instead of tying ourselves up with the idea of “fairness” and complaining about how things “aren’t fair”, it’s better to accept that no, things aren’t fair and deal with them as they exist in reality instead of through the lens of “but I really want it this way.” Because frankly it’s laughable to talk about how “unfair” it is that guys feel as though risking the sting of rejection is an injustice and how easy women have it when we’re still fighting over the idea of whether women are allowed to control if, when and how they have children.
So no. The world isn’t fair, and no amount of complaining is going to change the fact or make things any easier. You want things to be fair? Good. Start helping to build a world with true social and sexual equality.
Until then, you can complain about how “unfair” it all is like a child that isn’t getting ice cream.
Or you can man up.
Originally appeared at Paging Dr. NerdLove
- *Normally I try to avoid gendered phrases like this that carry the implication that acting like an adult is a masculine trait and that whining and complaining is a feminine one. But since I’m addressing guys in this case, it feels apt to use the gendered pronoun. It’s not about men vs. women, it’s the difference between acting like a boy or a grown-ass adult. [↩]
- Well, not literally, that’s just rude… [↩]
- fnar [↩]
- Marvel at my restraint! [↩]
Image courtesy of Flickr/xlordashx
If the chemistry is not right, you are not going to snag the hot ones or any-ones. You have to make the women want to be with you. It is either eye contact, conversation, body language (the way you take care of yourself) or it could be MONEY. In any case, try to get to know them. Do a favor for them, etc. Look at it like this. A woman had worked for me in an office doing order entry. My friend and I would ask her if she would like to join us and she always did. We always… Read more »
A lot of people say “Truth hurts”, but this is by far the most truthful and helpful article I’ve read on the topic of rejection and as I read it found myself several times chuckle and think “Yeah that’s true…” Thank you for writing this. I only wish I could’ve read it sooner.
You will never hear most ex-military guys having any kind of angst like this. As a young infantryman I went trolling with all of my buds who would mercilessly gut you with hooting derision everytime you struck out. You were sure to return the favor. The end result was that you learned not to take yourself too seriously and to laugh at yourself before everyone else could. When you get to where your ego is not tied to your success, (sort of a give-a-shit attitude) that confidence will result in more success than you can imagine.
@JULIE “There are a hell of a lot of feminist sites that don’t speak for me. I read them extremely rarely if at all, and I never comment.” From my perspective there aren’t any other platforms that deal with men’s issues in specific which don’t just shit all over my ”feministy” sensibilities. There are a multitude of feminist spaces, so probably it wouldn’t be difficult for you to find a few places where you feel comfortable (from my perspective). So if there was a feminist website where a particular writer just carelessly kept using the word ‘slut’ or something, maybe… Read more »
Most guys struggle to attract ordinary looking women who are their equals, not just the 9’s and 10’s.
Why is NerdLove gaslighting men?
It just goes on to show his contempt for men who struggle at attracting women and are frustrated as a result.
@Julia: I tried to do as you asked, but found I didn’t have the endurance. Generally what I hate about Dr. NerdLove is that he dismisses the possibility that there could exist gender norms that are harmful to men. “By buying into the idea that women rule the social scene with an iron hand, queen bees lording it over the poor witless men who only want their due absolves guys of the responsibility for their own actions and own failures.” Could you imagine the reaction if a piece was posted on a feminist website saying that talking about the pay… Read more »
And by “Julia” I of course mean “Julie”.
“Could you imagine the reaction if a piece was posted on a feminist website saying that talking about the pay gap is just an excuse not to think of what you could do to get a better paying job?” Ooh. Good point. And, a la Nerdlove, tell those women that they need to examine their own behavior, which may explain why they are not making as much money. And besides, life isn’t fair, so there’s no reason to expect pay equality. Be a grown-up and move on with your life. Stop blaming men for all the times men have gotten… Read more »
I’ll just throw in my vote, for what it’s worth, that this venue is not the most appropriate venue for NerdLove’s columns. A metric that pageviews alone do not capture. I had a problem with this part of the article: “It’s so much more satisfying to put all the blame on women rather than to admit that perhaps you’re doing something wrong.” Nowhere in this article (and I’m thinking back now to others of his I’ve read) does the author allow the possibility – nay, reality – that you can do everything right and still fail. In dating, in sports,… Read more »
What I see a lot in commentary, and I’m guilty of this myself sometimes, is the argument that if an article does not mention something then that means the author is ignoring it or dismissing it. Or, if an author fails to blame some people in the article he is therefore giving those people a free pass. So, if an article talks about men’s attitudes and behavior and does not mention women’s attitudes and behavior, therefore the author does not think women have any responsibility or should be held accountable at all. Possibly an accurate conclusion, but it’s pretty faulty… Read more »
You seem to be missing everything, the article is completely about debunking nice men’s plight.
What I hear you saying is that when I wrote a message about what commenters often do, I failed to explain what the article’s author was doing. I restricted my message to talking about a tendency I see within a particular group of people, which makes my message wrong because I did not talk about another person, so therefore I must have missed the point of this other person. Which means, presumably, that my comment is being criticized because it failed to mention something that my message was not intended to cover anyway. So, the argument seems to be that… Read more »
I think one of my problems with NerdLove in general is that when it comes to certain common female behaviors, (refusing to approach, creep shaming, going exclusively after high status males, etc) theres a level of understanding that he rarely affords to men if at all. He’ll talk about how social pressures and conventions lead to these behaviors or find a way to rationalize them, but when it comes to men hes far less empathetic. At times he seems to dismiss male frustrations all together putting the onus for all their problems squarely on them and their supposed sense of… Read more »
@ Jack Couldn’t have said it better myself. What’s worse is that he frequently claims to be refuting “myths,” but doesn’t actually refute the so-called myths, but rather rationalizes them. For example, he claimed that the belief that men have to do all the work in approaching and initiating is bullsh*t. But he never actually proved that such a belief is wrong. To do so, he would have had to provide significant evidence that women do in fact approach and initiate things. Rather, he provided some elaborate explanation about societal pressures. In other words, he rationalized the so-called “myth.” Frankly,… Read more »
This is my impression as well. Nerdlove strikes me as a typical white knight. That’s his shtick.
I have a similar impression from reading the larger body of his work. I’m not trying to let Nerdlove off the hook. What I most dislike is that the approach appears to imply that men have no influence over the dating scene. In his advice, a man has some control over how he reacts to his experiences in the dating world, and the individual man can control his reaction to learning the rules, but there’s no suggestion that men could ever influence the dating scene in any meaningful way. The dating world appears in his writing as this given thing… Read more »
Therefore, a man just has to be resigned to the way that it works. Complaining about how you appear to be mistreated and exploited is the same as complaining about Earth’s gravity. No one is to blame, pay no attention to the (wo)man behind the curtain, move along, nothing to see here. Get back on the horse right away, instead of inventing a better saddle for yourself. I’m not sure that’s how I interpret his work. To borrow your example it seems that he is saying that despite falling out trees, getting pushed of cliffs, and coming down when jumping… Read more »
That idea is so great it’s terrible. I think it should be implemented immediately starting a month or two from now, and both men and women would do well to give serious consideration to how it’s not worth a second thought by either gender. 😉
What, is no one going to call me on my apparent prejudice in suggesting there are only two genders? I would have expected some correction on that by this point.
Well, I tried to work that in at first, but it kept coming out not sounding as funny. It was easier and safer to just continue riffing on the amusing contradictions that you started. 🙂
Nice guys are very real and so is the friendzone. These are women who think that men can be used. They have one guy who they fuck total jerk hurts their feelings and then she has the other guy he truly cares but she just uses him as a shoulder to cry on and cares little for how he feels. When guy b exerts his individualtiy and distances himself from the friendzone the woman pulls out all the stops to keep him there. From “I don’t want you hanging arround that girl” to “how can you do this to me… Read more »
Most guys want more than just a f*uk, though. Especially the guys who are there for the person they hope to win over, who offer emotional support, etc. Saying “guy b didn’t want anything more than a f*ck” is part of the problem – misandrist reasoning such as “That guy just wants to f*ck me” is exactly how some women rationalize taking advantage of men.
I’m also confused as to why the Good Men Project publishes articles by Nerdlove.
NerdLove is not a good man. The advice NerdLove gives does not encourage other men to be good men. How does this have a place here?
Drew I think it’s a bit more nuanced than that.
I wouldn’t go as far as to say Nerdlove isn’t a good man or even that he doesn’t have any good points.
Truthfully I agree with the sentiment of not getting stuck in a spiral of despair. I just have a problem with the way he trivializes men’s experiences and does so by invoking the experiences of women to do so.
I remember a while back there was some controversy over things Bill Cosby said. Cosby was hypercritical of other blacks, and racist whites latched on to his criticisms and heralded him for “speaking the truth”. It was pretty clear they were just glad that the anti-black sentiment was coming from someone “safe” – it must be true that black people today are ignorant and lazy, because a black man is saying it! He can’t be racist! I, like other commenters, am getting that same feeling with NerdLove: it appears he’s here because the ‘feminist’ editors like what he has to… Read more »
“I, like other commenters, am getting that same feeling with NerdLove: it appears he’s here because the ‘feminist’ editors like what he has to say.”
LOL, SPOT ON
Why don`t TGMP stop publishing this guys articles. They are both full of shaming of men and attempts to invalidate the problems men phase and the only good advice they ever contain is stuff he has learned from PUAs and which they teach better than he does. It is pretty clear the commentators here aren`t very pleased with him. I would have thought that at a site that supposedly concerns itself with mens problems in society there would be dating advice that is not just feminist shaming and invalidation of mens issues. The tone in this article is horrible.
I have asked the Editors on several occasions just what value does he bring to the site.
Clearly, most men are very hostile to Nerdlove for good reasons.
He seems to be a PUA guy dressed up as an male who is empathetic to women.
“they’re not getting the sex that they “deserve”,”
Meanwhile MSM and female blogs are writing endless articles and blog posts about the husbands and boyfriends women DESERVE but somehow aren`t finding. How about covering THAT entitlement mentality in your writing.
HA, I was going to comment on this very phrase. The whole idea of men thinking they deserve sex is absolute garbage that feminists use to insulate themselves. It’s not a coincidence that the men they accuse of “deserving” sex are often shy men who might not know how to maximize their physical attributes (unfashionable), who aren’t hard charging, take over a room types. Men are sad, angry, and upset not that women they are interested in won’t “give” them sex, they’re upset the are rejected from emotional love, connection, companionship, and someone to share the ups and downs of… Read more »
Yeah, while I wouldn’t deny that some men think they “deserve” an exceptionally attractive woman, what I find equally common are women who think they “deserve” men of a certain status. Nerdlove himself dismisses this fact offhand in the first paragraph by implying that this is just PUA nonsense so he can spend the rest of the article bashing male entitlement while acting like the female brand doesn’t exist. And while some men may think they “deserve” sex, we hear less about the women who think they “deserve” gifts and expensive diners from men because this is considered traditional courtship.… Read more »
I nominate Jack for comment of the day.
Compassionate measures are necessary for women. They will die without them.
People in both genders have these sort of attitudes, but its only men that people like Nerdlove are ever critical of. Actually if it were just a matter of only being critical of men I’d be okay with it. Being critical one side doesn’t necessarily mean you don’t other other. That said however I think there is an issue with just how he criticizes men. In one breath it’s pointless to argue over who has it worse but in the next its decided that women have it worse. In one breath everyone’s pain is valid but in the next when… Read more »
I don’t see anything wrong with telling someone to “Man up.” I wish we said it more often, and I wish we said it to both women and men. I dislike that we keep telling everyone how “special and unique” they are. You only get somewhere in life by “manning up” and dealing with rejection, negative, criticism, bad experiences, and failure. A girl rejected you? Man up. Get over it. Do something about it so the next time you meet a girl your chances of rejection are decreased. You didn’t get the job you wanted? Man up. Get over it.… Read more »
I get the feeling that what you say here might be what Nerdlove is trying to say but instead of what you are say here he instead says: A girl rejected you? So what, why don’t you think about how that girl feels when she gets rejected. You didn’t get the job you wanted? Oh poor you. How about you be considerate and think what that employer is going through by not having that position filled. You got fired? Oh poor you. How about you be considerate and think what that employer is going through by not having that position… Read more »
Danny, Thank you for the compliment. Just to clarify, my comment was in response to the reactionary outcry against the phrase “Man up.” In regards to NL and his tone, I completely agree with you: His tone is snotty, rough, and while valid advice it seems written in such a way that he’s trying to make it sting as much as possible in the process; it’s the same for all of the articles he writes I get it, he’s supposed to be the ‘bro for the nerds’ (Hey, you mad, bro?) and instead of playing the role of the guy… Read more »
I try to glean whatever wisdom I can from every article, even if it’s hard to find, even if it’s wisdom about how not to write an article. My summary of his main point: There’s a difference between experiencing rejection and wallowing in it. There’s a difference between recognizing that you’ve been wronged and defining yourself by your being wronged. There are constructive responses to grief, anger, and loneliness, and there are destructive responses to these feelings. If a major goal for you is “dating and mating,” then the destructive ones are going to be counterproductive and may even trap… Read more »
“Take it like a man” is my proverbial “Nails on the chalkboard”.
“Take it like a man” tells me “Be stoic and unemotional, marginalize and ridicule those we see as weak or deficient”.
I’m of the same mind as the commenters – I’ve seen this same script recycled dozens of times: I, the special snowflake, am “discouraged” by society, the patriarchy, the misogyny, the binary, the beauty industry, the video games, the Reddit, the Madonna/whore complex, from reaching my full dating/flirting potential. My heart break and feelings of rejection are put upon me by the big “P” – you and your shite, well you suck, so just suck it up because it’s all your doing. Fix your mess!! If you’re going to have a bootstrap type philosophy, you can’t marry it with a… Read more »
Another thing. NL and other feminists like to claim that sexism and traditional gender roles are why women don’t approach men or initiate things. Absent these sexist constraints, women would jump at the opportunity to approach and hit on guys. Unfortunately, the evidence doesn’t support such an assertion. http://gawker.com/5686664/american-women-suck-at-flirting Even in more macho, patriarchal countries such as Colombia, Mexico, Italy, etc, women are more likely to flirt with and initiate courtship with men. So the so-called “patriarchy” can’t be blamed for American women’s unwillingness to initiate with men. There’s another factor at work, but I won’t mention it, since moderation… Read more »
Bay Area Guy
It is a B.S lie we are told that the reason women dont generally approach and pursue men is the elusive ‘cultural expectations’
Women pursue desirable men all the time. Any really attractive man will have tales to tell you of women pursuing him. Women just dont consider the majority of men worthy enough to be pursued. You can say they are more selective.
I’d like to know the ‘other factor’ youve referred to.
Well, yes, the “other factor” is that American women have become extremely picky and selective.
I didn’t mention that at first because I was afraid of being moderated.
i felt the doc’s buttonpushing was abit too obvious in this article
Agreed James. Maybe we should all just boycott the comments section when he gives his stellar “advice”. Read once (or better yet don’t read his articles at all), close the page. Let his articles die a quick death from lack of reading.
Yes that sounds like a good idea. The idea being that we should stay silent over this and that it will go away. The problem is there is already a strong following of this type of “advice”. Bear in mind that Nerdlove’s material didn’t start here. He already has his own well established shop and someone here at GMP thought it would be a good idea to bring his material over here. Staying silent is part of how it’s gotten this bad as it is. In fact Nerdlove and his fans actively hope that we will stay silent. I say… Read more »
where the hell is my comment
well doc’s last two or three articles didnt generate much comment, so i reckon he decided to go all in and include the kitchen sink, with ribbons on, on this one. lol
that said, im disturbed by attempts to encourage gmmp not to publish doc’s articles.
what fun, or insight, is there in group think. contrary voices are necessary for active and stimulating debate. commentors are free to rebut in the comment section if they disagree.
i wouldnt want gmmp to turn into an ec.ho chamber, something that is seen on so many femmminist blogs
I couldn’t even read half of this article. I had to stop after every few paragraphs from what I did read because it was so insulting. I should have stopped at the meme. I went through a rejection last June, and it still is painful. When I asked the girl out in May, I went through a fear of rejection after she was silent afterwards. It turns out that there was a chance she was leaving the area and not anything she saw wrong with me then. After we started seeing each other, she eventually did leave and came out… Read more »
Kevin gets right to the heart of the matter when he says:
Precisely. Well said. Thank you.
I think you’re both right. And I don’t think Harris really wants you to stop feeling pain. He’s basically saying that yes, there is time to mourn and grieve and everything, but get out of the echo chamber, get out of the mindset that you’re being wronged and try to move forward. I don’t think he really wants you to not be sad, or frustrated, or hurt. I think he’s basically saying, “Yes, I get it, it sucks and I’ve been there, but you have to try to move past it and focus on what you want.”
Can’t that be said ( the last, quoted, sentence) without trivializing the pain men feel? When men repeatedly say that they feel their pain doesn’t count, in our everyday lives and unfortunately here as this piece illustrates, could there be some merit to that? On a site that at least acknowledges that men are expected to be unemotional robots and that we pay a price for showing our feelings, using language like “Take it like a man” is either extraordinarily stupid or purposely provocative. Please show me another way to look at it. Or should we also just “get over”… Read more »
I think what I see here is that the title is really throwing people off, and I should’ve changed it. Because the content of the article, I don’t think, shames men or tells them not to feel “bad” feelings. I think it’s way more positive and personal than that. But the title has a lot of people hung up. Lesson learned. That being said, I stand by what Harris is saying here. Not just for men, but for women. I hear women ALL THE TIME going around: Guys suck. Guys just want to use women for sex. Guys will lie… Read more »
…even if you COULD measure that, which you can’t –… Is it fair that men “have” to be the aggressors? No, not really… because “fair” never really comes into the question. “Fair” assumes that men and women are otherwise completely equal; it ignores that every interaction doesn’t occur in a vacuum and that interaction between men and women is informed by thousands of years of enforced gender roles, female subservience and views of male and female sexuality and interrelations that have only started to change in the last hundred years or so. The “risks” that men have to subject themselves… Read more »
I think what I see here is that the title is really throwing people off, and I should’ve changed it.
i dont think it is the title.
doc even finishes his piece with this, ‘Until then, you can complain about how “unfair” it all is like a child that isn’t getting ice cream. Or you can man up.’
Joanna, if Nerdlove were merely admonishing guys not to nourish bitter and resentful feelings, and move on for their own good, then he wouldn’t be provoking such hostile responses. However, he goes way beyond that. He’s basically telling guys that their feelings of frustration aren’t genuine, that they’re solely privileged whine, that women are never wrong, etc. In other words, it’s all in men’s heads. It’s one thing to suggest that you drop the anger for practical reasons, it’s another to suggest that those angry feelings can only stem from feelings of entitlement and misogyny. (if you can actually find… Read more »
To be clear, I’m good with individuals taking responsibility for things that have an impact on their lives. That is part of NLs message. And Joanna, you’re right that the title likely had me and others reading with a more critical eye, but that critical eye still found offspring of the title swimming around the article and mucking up the more useful message. Relationship stuff is tough for everyone. The suffering olympics hands out some pretty crappy medals. I don’t see the point in men or women trying to win any of them, or in men or women hanging onto… Read more »
Joanna On one hand you acknowledge that men have to be the aggressors but on the other you deny that men have it more difficult in this aspect of life. Why dont you accept that, all things equal, men have it more difficult? That the dating scene is unfair to men? Then we can just accept that and move on. If society continues to deny that there is something wrong with the rules/norms, then the blame of failure will fall totally on men which is even more unfair. Its like something is unfair and you dont even want to acknowledge… Read more »
Why dont you accept that, all things equal, men have it more difficult?
Actually this is probably the one thing that I whole heartedly agree with Joanna with on. There is no point in trying to find some conclusive answer to “who has it worse”
I’d be fine with just acknowledging metrics where men have it difficult and what metrics where women have it difficult. That’s all that we need in order to work on fixing them.
Joanna
On one hand you acknowledge that men have to be the aggressors and on the other you deny that men have it more difficult in this aspect of life.
I disagree, Joanna. Nerdlove’s message is “man up”–he even uses that specific phrase in this week’s article–and that is ALWAYS contemptuous and dismissive of men. ALWAYS.
His first footnote probably expresses it better than “act like a man.” I’d say “be a grown-ass adult” is the better way to put it.
No that were actually make sense and be reasonable. We can’t have that. Better to invoke shaming language and then try to cover your tracks with footnotes and disclaimers later.
If that’s the case, then he’s seriously undermining his message with his use of language like: “take it like a man” “deal with it like a man” “put on my big-boy pants” “man up” This is precisely the same invalidating, manipulative language that is regularly used to shame men and boys out of whatever feelings they may be having that someone else finds inconvenient or uncomfortable. Early in this post, he says: Now I will be the first to tell you: being shot down sucks. But you have two ways of dealing with it. You can bitch, moan and whine… Read more »
If there’s an acknowledgment in there somewhere that men might have the need (and the right) for time to mourn and grieve what may be felt in some cases as a very deep loss, I’m not seeing it. My only guess (more like leap of faith) is that he is somehow trying to say that the time to mourn and grieve is a part of the “deal with it like a man” process. Personally I think that’s a cop out but I it wouldn’t surprise me if that was the claim. I think one problem at work here is even… Read more »
He’s basically saying that yes, there is time to mourn and grieve and everything, but get out of the echo chamber, get out of the mindset that you’re being wronged and try to move forward. It seems more like he saying that men are not being wronged. Look at how he tries to say that the pains and harms that guys go through are really just this or really just that and uses the pains and harms that women go through as proof that men really don’t have it that bad. I agree that being stuck in the mindset of… Read more »
But time and time again as usual all we get is a pat on the head, a bit of lip service, and told that we really are wrong and we should just get over ourselves. I think this is a great point. Many men are in pain. They don’t know where to go with it and they often don’t know how to express it productively. Their distress is only amplified by the fact that they’re being told the pain they feel is not only illegitimate, but evidence of their own innate deficiencies as men. Pain is information, and I don’t… Read more »
They don’t know where to go with it and they often don’t know how to express it productively. Their distress is only amplified by the fact that they’re being told the pain they feel is not only illegitimate, but evidence of their own innate deficiencies as men. Yes. While I am fully in agreement with keeping men from being consumed by their pain I do have a problem is denying the existence of said pain. And I have an even bigger problem with using someone else’s pain as evidence in that denial. Pain is information, and I don’t think we’re… Read more »
“Would it hurt to extend a bit of it over to men too”
Of course it would, Danny. Only women’s problems matter.
May I just say, I’m loving how this conversation is going. No matter how many articles try to sell us on the notion that men should just shut up and serve feminist goals, the men here aren’t standing for it. Bravo!
Joanna, this empathetic guy you describe sounds like he might be a great resource for guys struggling with dating. I sure hope he finds a way to untie himself and wrest control of the keyboard back from this other guy who’s been writing articles under his byline.
LOL
Yeah, maybe I read too much into it.
I have read Nerdlove’s articles many many times and either I’m blind as a bat to men’s pain and sensitivity or there is a hell of a lot of projection going on. Or both. Perhaps neither! Maybe Nerdlove is a magician and writes in such a way that genders see entirely different messaging thus leading to the fights online in a bid for maximum page views!!! I’d like Danny or Marcus to take an article, this one even, and break it down sentence by sentence for me and then allow me to rebut and ask questions and get clarification. I’m… Read more »
This is what is so confusing to me. There are a hell of a lot of feminist sites that don’t speak for me. I read them extremely rarely if at all, and I never comment. I don’t understand the fixation on yelling at someone who doesn’t seem to give a damn if you are yelling. The point isn’t to get through to Nerdlove, at least for me it’s not. The point to try to reach out to the folks in the comments. Those that agree and those that disagree. There is no shortage of people that have tweeted Nerdlove’s posts… Read more »
Quite honestly, that’s not what I wind up seeing. If you ever want to email your detailed breakdown of an article, I’ll read it.
So just what do you end up seeing? It’s not like this is the first time that someone has expressed that they disagreed with something posted here at GMP and tried to engage with others in the comments. …don’t comment and give him pageviews if you have such distaste for him If it were that simple I would. But with the good size fan following behind these posts staying away may not be the way. This is what is so confusing to me. There are a hell of a lot of feminist sites that don’t speak for me. I read… Read more »
Julie, everyone have a right to disagree and post their disagreement. Like any women never disagree with Tom Matlack post ” Men’s right have nothing to do with feminism” and never post their disagreement? lol, you clearly very very biased towards women and feminism Julie. Its very confusing reading your comment about being confused why so many men post their disagreement. lol, like all of women who post their disagreement suddenly sending their OWN ARTICLE LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
YOU ARE SO FUNNY!!! WOW!!!!
no I’m disagree with you, I’m not funny. Do I need to email my own article because I’m disagreeing and posting my disagreement? WOW!!
I agree Nerdlove doesn’t give a damn about the reception he gets at GMP. I don’t believe GMP gives a damn because it’s content they can count on and he draws steady pageviews, even if a lot of those are to give him hell for being so ill-suited to the presumed target demographic of the site. Whoever he may think he’s writing to and for, I think it would take some willful blindness not to notice that his biggest (only?) cheerleaders at GMP are staunch feminists – mostly women but a few men – who rather than learning anything new… Read more »
“Julie, I think you see projection instead of justified hard feelings because you are Nerdlove’s kind of Born Again.” You really seem to have it in for me, Marcus. I don’t agree with everything Nerdlove says. In fact, I’m not all that fond of some of his work, and find the agitation he produces on this site, less than useful. What I meant by pick apart phrases, was exactly that. Like, I could imagine you and I (or at least I could at one point) getting on skype and having a freaking conversation about sentences and what the words sound… Read more »
I really doubt Nerdlove gives a damn. I’ve emailed him a few times to ask questions, never heard a thing.
I’m positive he reads the comments. He’s just not man enough to discuss his writing with his critics here.
You only said two option for a man after a feeling of rejection and loneliness, bitching or moaning, and take it like a man. I don’t bitching and moaning and blaming women for my problem, but I certainly don’t take it like a man either. Because I’m really sad, and I cry alone every night because of my loneliness. But I don’t bitching and moaning and saying I’m a nice guy and saying women are whore. I don’t. I realized what my problem is, I’m shy, and thats my fault, not women or anybody’s fault, but I still don’t have… Read more »
I don’t see why so much hate is getting directed at this guy. Sure some of his advice is fairly generic and watered-down, but he doesn’t seem to be hating or shaming men. All he’s saying here is that getting rejected sucks, but blaming everything on women or society will just lead to a vicious cycle and do anything but help you towards your goal (getting dates/hooking up). Admittedly the last section seems to derail into standard feminist tropes, but I don’t see any real shaming just urging men to act with a little more dignity and self-respect… And I’m… Read more »
Melenas: “All he’s saying here is that getting rejected sucks, but blaming everything on women or society will just lead to a vicious cycle and do anything but help you towards your goal (getting dates/hooking up).” The problem is that even men who don’t hate or blame women for the problems yet address their issues with rejection are labeled women haters and entitled whiners anyway. Dr. Nerdlove refuses to address this (or he’s likely labeled any form of expression as women hating for men unsuccessful in the dating market). Melanas: “Admittedly the last section seems to derail into standard feminist… Read more »
Eagle35: I’m trying to give Dr. Nerdlove the benefit of the doubt here, but I think this article is only addressing guys who hold on to bitterness and resentment after being rejected, or turn it around and start blaming women. In other words, if you aren’t doing that then I don’t think he’s talking about you. Where has he accused all (unsuccessful in the dating market) men of hating women? And yes, I expect women to act with dignity and respect too. There are women who string along guys they know are attracted to them just for fun or to… Read more »
Melanas: “I’m trying to give Dr. Nerdlove the benefit of the doubt here, but I think this article is only addressing guys who hold on to bitterness and resentment after being rejected, or turn it around and start blaming women. In other words, if you aren’t doing that then I don’t think he’s talking about you.” I repeat, even men who don’t hold on to bitterness and resentment after being rejected, when they express their feelings about it they are STILL LABELED WOMEN HATERS! Don’t you get it? Men aren’t allowed to even have an opinion on their rejection and… Read more »
Eagle35:
Did you actually read the article or are you just projecting? He’s not calling every man who’s been rejected a woman hater, and he’s not saying your feelings don’t count. The only part that even comes close is the standard feminist “women have everything worse because patriarchy” disclaimer.
He’s just saying that rejection sucks, but it’s better to learn from it and move on rather than wallowing in bitterness.
And the article isn’t about the assholes who call every man who expresses his feelings a woman hater.
Melenas, I tend to agree with your take on this, as far as it goes. NL makes some good points regarding how to immediately handle a rejection, and it’s always best to keep a positive outlook and to go through life with a little grace. Even these messages are diminished, though, by his pandering tone. To clarify, I’m in a relationship and I’ve never had a ton of trouble finding one. I’m also older than many of the guys here, so my experience may be different than what it would be if I had been born a few decades later.… Read more »
That’s just it though, as much as we’d like to think that we’re all unique special flowers the truth is biology, culture, and our personal social circles dominate our preferences. While Jane is an individual with her own specific tastes and interests, Jane also falls into one of many different tropes/buckets/types of people and shares her tastes and interests with the archetypal preferences of that group. There are some women that will flat out be uninterested you for whatever reason that you can’t control, maybe she only likes black men, very tall men, women, etc, but if you meet those… Read more »
That makes sense, KC. I guess where I get a little fuzzy is on how far some men are encouraged to go in adapting their approach to fit the preferences of a “type” (I agree that we can be unique but still clump together in some ways). It could also be that some types may not be compatible with some men who themselves are a type, in which case the 15 rejections might be telling the guy that he at the very least is facing tougher odds approaching his preferred type. That’s good info too, allowing him to continue as… Read more »
Dr Nerd Love is simply saying that there should be no acknowledgement of the fact that the dating scene is unfair and biased against men.
Most of us men can accept that life is generally unfair and the dating scene is one of the aspects where men have it more difficult. We can accept that and move on.
But Dr Nerd Love doesnt want us to have that piece of mind even.
“I don’t see why so much hate is getting directed at this guy.”
It’s because of the condescension of his tone, and the way he frames his arguments. It’s that same condescension which characterizes all too many of the feminist writers who write on the same subject.
And I should add, it’s not the advice that is so offensive, it’s the condescension that seems to inevitably accompany it.
Well, I’m just going to say what I’ve said before.
People like the writer should learn they have no right to lecture men on what to do, how to think, how to feel, and how much they should express themselves.
The more I think about it, the more Dr. Nerdlove is nothing more than Hugo Schwartzer the 2nd in his shaming of men.
The more I think about it, the more Dr. Nerdlove is nothing more than Hugo Schwartzer the 2nd in his shaming of men.
Pretty much.
I could never imagine a women’s website such as Jezebel ever featuring articles by pro-male women like Girl Writes What or Quiet Riot Girl.
@Bay Area Guy… Of course. I really challenge the editors of GMP to explain just what value he brings to the site. I have asked before and in typical leftist or feminist style, I get silence. This is one of the most glaring differences between discourse on the Right vs. the Left. On the Right, there is NO PC. There is true freedom of expression. No “moderation” which is nothing more than a code word for censorship (Old East European style). What are the editors fearful of? If most of the men here hold Dr NL in contempt, what is… Read more »
If not active censorship.
@Julia Byrd “This is one of the most glaring differences between discourse on the Right vs. the Left. On the Right, there is NO PC. There is true freedom of expression. No “moderation” which is nothing more than a code word for censorship” (Though I’m sure I’ll regret furthering this political sidetrack ….) In the meantime, here in my home state of Illinois, members of the GOP are trying to oust the party’s state chairman after he said he personally has no problem with gay marriage. And let’s not forget the hissy fit many on the Right threw when Chris… Read more »
“People like the writer should learn they have no right to lecture men on what to do, how to think, how to feel, and how much they should express themselves.”
I share the sentiment expressed here, but it’s not actually true. Fortunately or unfortunately, on the internet everyone has the right to lecture anyone else on anything. No one is obliged to take his advice, but people who are totally wrong have the total right to be totally wrong.
I imagine this is what happens when Nerdlove talks to one of his friends about his theories. [Dr. Nerdlove enters the scene, a bar, and greets his friend with a forced smile.] Dr. Nerdlove: Hey, man! A Friend: Hey Dr. Nerdlove! Wow, you look tired. Dr. Nerdlove: Yeah, I know. It was a long day. A Friend: How so? Dr. Nerdlove: Did I tell you that I’m looking for a new job? I already wrote 40 applications. But so far only rejections. So I wrote another 20 today. A Friend: Man, that sucks. Another friend of mine wrote 120 applications… Read more »
Yep. Rewarmed 1990’s BS like ‘think your way to success!’ and ‘self actualization’. It’s like they hired some washed-up self-help guru to write their advice articles. The first step toward actually trying to help people is learning to speak in a way that will be listened to. He had been told repeatedly that nobody is listening. He doesn’t change tactics. He either isn’t trying to help or he simply sucks at it. Or maybe men aren’t his real audience. The things he says sound suspiciously like the things the women on this site want to tell us. Maybe they’re the… Read more »
Or maybe men aren’t his real audience. The things he says sound suspiciously like the things the women on this site want to tell us. Maybe they’re the real audience, and he’s just pretending that we are.
I’ve long suspected this.
By Jove, I think you’ve got it.
Nailed it, Soullite.
Nerdlove’s routine is a display for the benefit of women, only nominally addressed to men. He reinforces the “your job is to serve and please women” model of masculinity–and they applaud him for it.
It’s pure misandry, and not particularly well hidden.
LMAO!!!!
And then there’s this nonsense. Because yes, it would be nice if everybody – men and women alike – could tell in advance who was single and looking and who wasn’t. It would be nice if women felt as though they were more empowered to approach people they were interested in without fear of recrimination or even physical danger. It would also be nice if I won the Powerball this weekend. Yes, because clearly, being involuntarily celibate and being denied access to intimacy is clearly the same thing as not winning the Powerball. That he would even make such an… Read more »
You know, it’s funny. For a male feminist like NL who once denounced “gaslighting” when applied against women, his posts consistently gaslight men. He’s basically telling romantically unsuccessful guys that none of their grievances regarding the dating market/behavior of women could possibly be correct. It’s all in their heads, whether it’s because they’re a bunch of misogynists or whiners. Women are NEVER wrong, in his book. It’s always the guy’s fault. For someone who espouses feminist views, he often sounds like a Texas Republican (IIRC, NL is from Texas). Pull yourself up by your bootstraps, man up, take responsibility, don’t… Read more »