Estimated reading time: 20 minutes
Dear Dr. NerdLove,
I’m writing because I’m exhausted by my own libido, and I don’t really know what to do with it anymore.
I’m a man, and lately I’ve found myself wishing I could just stop feeling sexual desire toward women altogether. Not because I hate women, or because I want to blame them for anything. I know this is my issue. But I’m tired of how much space desire takes up in my head. I’m tired of feeling like women are some kind of judge of my worth, even when I know intellectually that they are just people living their own lives.
I’ve been trying to channel that energy into healthier things. I go on walks. I go to the gym. I try to focus on self-improvement. But then I catch myself realizing that even those things don’t feel fully mine anymore. Working out doesn’t feel like something I’m doing because I enjoy being strong or healthy. It starts to feel like something I’m doing to become more attractive, to become more “worthy,” to be the kind of man women might approve of.
And I hate that.
I’m sick of feeling like I always have to be the best, the most impressive, the most attractive, the most confident, the most successful version of myself just to have a chance at being wanted. It feels like there is this constant fire of competition inside me, like I’m always being measured against other men, even when no one is actually measuring me.
I miss the days when I could just have fun. I miss being able to play computer games for hours and not think about women, attraction, dating, validation, or whether I was “enough.” I miss having hobbies that felt innocent and private, instead of everything becoming part of some imaginary project to make myself more desirable.
I don’t want to live with this constant hunger for validation. I don’t want every woman I see to become a reminder of what I lack, or what I’m afraid I’ll never be. I don’t want my self-worth to depend on whether women find me attractive. I just want peace.
Is there a way to stop thinking about women so much? Is there a way to reduce the power that sexual desire and romantic validation have over me? Are there any books, practices, or ways of thinking that could help me detach from this constant need to be seen as attractive?
I know “suppressing my libido” may not be the healthiest way to phrase it. Maybe what I really want is not to destroy my desire, but to stop being controlled by it. I want to be able to live my life, enjoy my interests, take care of my body, and improve myself without everything secretly revolving around whether it makes me more appealing to women.
I’m just tired. I want to feel like my life belongs to me again.
Sincerely,
Tired of Wanting
I’m going to ask you a couple questions, ToW, and I want you to really think about this before you answer any of them. It’s going to sound like I’m being dismissive or not taking you seriously, but I promise you: I’m going somewhere with these.
First: what are you doing and consuming that reinforces these feelings of comparison and validation-seeking?
Second: what are you not doing that’s just for you? What, if anything, are you denying yourself in the name of constantly seeking external validation?
Third: what, if anything, are you doing that makes you feel good? Not distracted, not momentarily numb, good? What is nourishing your soul and makes you want to get up in the morning because you know this is waiting for you?
I want you to really dig into this, because the issue here isn’t your libido and you don’t need to repress anything. Your libido isn’t the problem; what you’re describing are emotional needs that you feel are going unmet, and it’s important that to pay attention to why you’re feeling this way. After all, it doesn’t do you any good to treat symptoms instead of addressing underlying causes or, worse, treating the wrong thing entirely.
So take a moment and really dig into these questions. I would even suggest that you take a long, hard look at your FYP on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok and notice what topics are coming up, what videos are being served to you and what sorts of messages are being conveyed. Checking your algorithmic content is a shockingly good way to read your own mind and emotional state, because it’s going to tell you what you’ve been interacting with and responding to. That, in turn, is going to be a very large, flashing indicator about what’s affecting your mood and – with a little mindfulness and introspection – tell you why you’re having a hard time shaking that feeling. Because here’s what you need to realize: a lot of the content being thrown at dudes like you is created to exacerbate needs, not fulfill them. After all, if you fulfill someone’s need, they’re not going to come back for more.
Worse, many of them want you focused on the wrong things. They want you to mistake the desire you’re feeling for something they can sell you and so they’ll tell you that you’re lacking this thing or that thing that they just so happen are able to provide. So not only are you being worked, you’re being increasingly distanced from understanding your own needs, unable to recognize what you’re really seeking because you’re drowning in a deluge of people telling you that Brawndo is what plants crave.
Here is the thing that you need to understand: that emptiness you feel isn’t about desirability; desirability is just the metric you’re using to measure your self-worth. It’s the yard stick by which you can say “Ok, this means that I have value. The fact that I have this means that I am a person with worth and meaning.” But those are ultimately empty calories, the emotional equivalent of a bag of Cheetos – something designed with a particular flavor profile, texture, mouth feel and crunch that provides a moment of satiation that vanishes almost instantly, leaving you feeling hungrier than before.
This is why you feel like you’re stuck on a treadmill or running in a Red Queen’s Race, running as fast as you can to stay right where you are. You’re trying to fill a need with something that can’t fill that need. Not in the way that will actually nourish you, or even in a way that will leave you satiated for longer than a second or two. Everything you’re feeling driven to pursue is in the name of pleasing other people, meeting a metric other people aren’t judging you on, and gaining the approval of folks who don’t know you exist.
It’s also why you’re not feeling satisfied with playing games or some of your hobbies aren’t helping; if you go back and look, I think you’re going to find that many of the games you’re playing are also designed to keep you in the loop of dissatisfaction – always on the grind, always being told that you need to hit your dailies, maintain your streak, reach the top of this leaderboard. And when you’re not playing games that want to make you feel bad for not playing, you’re playing to be distracted, rather than because you’re enjoying the game for its own sake and being guided through an experience or narrative the developers want to share with you. It’s unsatisfying because you can only distract yourself for so long before those needs reassert themselves and pierce the veil you’re putting up.
That’s why the answer is two-fold. You need to recognize the need that’s going unmet and then you need to actually meet it yourself. This is why I keep harping on the “your primary source of validation needs to be internal”; it’s not that external validation is inherently bad and to be avoided, it’s because external validation by itself will never satisfy you or leave you feeling whole.
Case in point: pursuing self-improvement. This is something I increasingly side-eye, because people who are chasing self-improvement are almost never trying, for example, to be better friends and partners, better members of their community or providing support to others. Nor is it in the name of “I would love to be better at making music or creating art or growing something beautiful”. It’s almost always “optimization” in ways that serve capitalism – a harder, more “productive” worker, increasing “value” for others and ultimately serving in the name of “line go up” and “move number from one side of the sheet to the other”. It’s about having the biggest dick in the dick-measuring contest, not about “I want to make my corner of the world a better place for the people around me”.
I’m all in favor of self-improvement; I wouldn’t be doing this job if I wasn’t. But if you want to improve yourself, it’s important to be mindful of what and who you’re doing it for and what that improvement is in service of. It’s the difference be better than the person next to you, or being better than your past self. It’s the difference between building something with and for others, or simply laboring to meet someone else’s agenda.
So, as you answer those questions I proposed at the top, look at some of things you mention that you do and then ask yourself this: what would you be doing differently if you were doing this entirely for yourself? How would your workouts at the gym look if you weren’t trying to maximize your aesthetics but instead wanted just to improve your health or reach new personal milestones? What would change? What would you be doing differently? How would you be thinking about it?
The same goes for your hobbies: if you had time carved out to do something strictly for yourself and your own satisfaction, what would it be?
Now another question for you: when is the last time you felt like you were part of something bigger than yourself? Not a corporation, not a job where you’re just an interchangable cog in a machine, something that can be replaced as needed, but part of a community, working towards a common goal? When have you felt like you contributed to something worthwhile, that would lead to an outcome that’s greater than the sum of its parts?
You don’t need distraction and you don’t need suppression, you need fulfillment. You need satisfaction. You need to stop isolating and instead start communing.
Once you have answered the questions I posed to you, you’ll have a much better handle on why you’re feeling the way you are, what you’re actually missing in your life and why the ways you’re trying to fill that hole aren’t working. From there, the next step is very simple: give yourself permission to let go of the things you’ve been focused on and zero in on what nourishes you. If you’re not sure how, then it’s time to experiment and explore, using the guideline of “if I were to die tomorrow, would I regret how I spent today?”
Instead of working out for aesthetics, for example, maybe you should try a class – Pilates, perhaps or yoga, something that’s outside your usual comfort zone and offers improvement in areas you might be neglecting. Or you might go out on Friday or Saturday to see live music and get lost in the energy of the crowd’s vibes instead of trying to get laid. You might decide to hit pause on the games you’re playing and do something tactile and tangible – mod an iPod, set up a container garden on your patio, put together a book nook that looks like a neon-lit alley in Shibuya. Find a cause in your community that could use your time and effort – maybe delivering food and company to seniors in need, helping at the no-kill animal shelter, even volunteering to help a local political campaign for city council or state legislature.
And while you’re at it: do a vigorous clean out and detox of your social media. Block the influencers and content creators who keep telling you what you’re doing wrong or keep trying to push you to stay unsatisfied. Quiet the voices that keep saying that you’re never going to be enough or measure up unless you follow their rules and out-compete the people who won’t. Pay attention to what you’re paying attention to and start culling the things that exist only to make you upset, angry or depressed.
Do this, and I think you’re going to find you feel much better. You’ll be happier with yourself, you’ll feel like you’ve given your life and existence meaning, and you’ll feel like you actually have value. Value and worth that comes from you, not from the approval or judgment of others.
After that? You’ll notice how much better your life will be. You don’t suppression or repression, ToW; you just need to redirect your focus to where it needs to go.
Good luck.
Dear Dr. NerdLove: Thank you for all your constant advice. I am always glad when I see you have a good take on poly stuff, and I’m often yelling at my screen that ‘I LIKE ALL THOSE THINGS’ when people write in about being too effeminate or a little needy or having weird hobbies and you are always so grounding. It’s just lovely that you make the world a better place a little bit every day.
Hoping you can also help me navigate this strange dating tightrope!
I guess it would seem from the outside that I am already dealing with a weird combo of things; I’m (very late in life) transmasc, have always been pan and poly… but I live in a big city and while I’m pretty introverted and like staying at home more than anything, I don’t have too much trouble making friends when people speak to me first or we meet online. So I don’t actually think those things are holding me back much.
I’m almost 50. I have a fun job, I’m fairly healthy, have aged well (so far – it’s a blessing and a curse to look good for your age with clothes on), and am very online, and although I really do spend a lot of time in the house most of my interests and styles trend younger so it’s often assumed I’m in my early 30s. But I think an age gap (in either direction) can be cute and loving as long as everyone is over ~25 and there are no weird power dynamics happening, so again, fine.
I work a little too much, but I really enjoy it, and the nice apartment it provides. Did I mention I like staying at home a little too much? But I’ve started to wish more lately that I had someone (preferably several people) to share my nice comfy sofa with of an evening.
This is where it gets complicated.
I’m madly into lots of physical affection (receiving, not so good at the giving in the early stages), and generally enjoy being a little dominant – in life, not necessarily in bed, and quietly, gently, in a way that’s respectful for my partner feeling good and into it. That feels really hard to navigate when people are almost always 10-20 years younger than me. And it’s usually a blocker for any men my age, who so far seem a little more patriarchal and not into that. There are people I would switch for, but very few – I have some trust issues I guess.
I can also tell sometimes when I meet people that they’re flirting… touches, invites to things, compliments, asking more about my ‘type’ and relationship status. But at this stage I am still feeling really wary, like I hardly know them, like I’m not sure if I could like them ‘that way’ yet. Or terrified that I will be too pushy and it will be completely inappropriate – honestly the younger they are the more I am determined to wait for them to make the first move as that seems very sensible and safer for them. But instead, they seem to lose interest.
So these days I wonder a lot if I’m asexual, scared of physical intimacy due to the recent top surgery, demisexual, overthinking the age thing, or maybe just tired and stupid 😀
There have been 3 people (all in 30s this time) in the last year that I (eventually) decided I really did like enough to try something with them. But every time I had already waited too long. One still seems friendly but is now resistant any time I try to talk more deeply about anything in life, even though he seemed to like that before (it took a year before I knew I liked him). One I fumbled so badly by being really fsking awkward when we finally met in person (after 6 months of intermittent online hangouts) – I waited for more in-person physical signs in case the online ones were ‘just being friendly’, but I already knew they enjoyed being a little subby so those of course never came and now we don’t really talk much. And in the last 4 months I’ve managed to go on three ‘dates’ with someone (we went as friends so were they even dates?) – 2 bars and a very cozy intimate restaurant she picked – and now she doesn’t really answer my texts, and I’m pretty sure it’s just because I was unresponsive to her flirting and she made it super clear she really enjoyed a lot of sex and would like to jump into bed with people quickly, and I just wasn’t ready for that. I do really enjoy sex from time to time, but if I never had sex again, I’d also feel fine about that, it’s more the person I am interested in. And also why I like poly because there’s less pressure on just one person to supply all the needs of the other.
I tell everyone right up front that I find dating a little hard because ‘it takes me a long time to warm up to people’ and ‘it can be hard to find someone who’s okay with poly’ but the reality is that it’s definitely me that’s the problem, and I can’t seem to speedrun my feelings fast enough before the light leaves their eyes.
I could certainly meet more people and try to play a numbers game (Feeld seems to have good options), but that doesn’t matter when I am continually fumbling it so badly in the early stages. At this point I’d actually prefer the early rejections than this habit of getting further and then losing a friend.
Please tell me how to do better?
-Getting In My Own Way
This one’s simple, GIMOW: you need to give yourself permission to do the things you want. The issue at hand is that you keep putting up barriers and rules and regulations and caveats that, in theory, are in the name of being a good and considerate partner but are really excuses to delay and do nothing.
To be perfectly honest, it sounds to me like you’re afraid to actually own your own desires and to act on them. I can’t help but notice how many times you seem to waiting for approval or permission – not even from your potential partners, but from society at large – to want what you want and to be who you want. The way you describe your interactions, you sound almost apologetic for having desires in the first place and want other people to tell you that it’s ok to think someone’s hot and maybe you should make out about it. You even say it in your letter: “like I’m not sure if I could like them ‘that way’ yet”
That doesn’t feel like you’re unsure of your feelings. That feels like you’re not letting yourself feel that way. The way you talk about things makes it pretty clear to me that you’re talking yourself out of things that you feel or thinking that you “need” to hit more milestones before you can say “yup, that’s what I want” without being hit by some sort of strike by the Libido Police, to the point that you’re self-sabotaging. Some of the more recent interactions you describe sound less like you waited too long and more like you actively held back on showing interest, to the point that folks got confused and frustrated or thought that you didn’t like them.
There’s trying to be a caring and supportive potential partner and then there’s playing things so safe that you won’t even pursue people who are your type, people who seem to be positively affirming that they’re into you, and instead, deny your own wants and desires. Or worse, pursuing people who are the opposite of what you want.
In fact, I wonder if it really is those “younger” people – many of whom, I feel the need to point out, are in their 30s – who aren’t vibing with the whole dominant vibe or you, so much as you’re picking people who are also dominant, because you know at some level they’re going to say “nah.” I promise you: there’re guys who are subs and bottoms, including service bottoms, who aren’t just cool with a more “daddy” vibe but will actively seek it out if you give them half a chance. But it doesn’t sound like you’re giving them that chance.
And that really does seem to be the common refrain in your experiences: not giving people a chance, even if they’re giving you the green light. If anything, it sounds like you’re doing the opposite, with all the people you like. You list three separate occasions where you have had folks you knew were feeling it, to the point that they would likely have hopped in your lap and start to wiggle if you asked. Instead, you delayed and delayed and delayed in the name of “being sure,” until such time as they gave up. You don’t need to jump into bed with folks at a pace you’re not comfortable with, but it sounds like you’re not even indicating that it’s something you might be into in the near future.
Yeah, you may take time to warm up to folks, but I’m wondering if you’re even turning the oven on in the first place.
Now I will say up front that I’m a middle-aged, cis straight man, and I’m not going to have perspective or experience that a transmasc person will, so take what I say with all appropriate skepticism and salt but: is it possible you’re still wrestling with the socialization you grew up with before you transitioned? If your transition was closer to your present than your past – you mention your top surgery was recent – is it possible you’re still adjusting and adapting to your gender and unlearning the habits you built up in your past? Some of what you describe sounds very femme-coded, especially the way that women and AFAB people are socialized to suborn and suppress their own wants and needs in the name of prioritizing others’. Like I said: I’m a cis dude, so this may be just me not being aware of important dynamics or context, and if I’m shoving my foot in my mouth, I freely apologize. But I think there may be some value in adopting the confidence of a mediocre straight white man and be willing to say “no, fuck it, I’m allowed to want what I want and to express what I want,” and then give people the chance to decide if they rock with that.
I’m not into gender essentialism and fuck knows there’s aspects of “traditional” masculine tropes and behaviors that cause more harm than good. But if there’s one thing I think you could stand to bring into your identity as a man, it’s being allowed to want what you want and to go out and get what you want.
(Truthfully, I think everyone should adopt that line of thinking, regardless of sex or gender.)
That doesn’t mean ignoring lack of interest or consent or engaging in inappropriate behavior, nor does it mean that you act like a demon of old and have to be denied three times before you back off. It just means not feeling like the act of wanting something or someone is inherently objectionable or problematic. You’re dealing with grown-ass adults, all of whom are fully capable of saying “yes”, “no” and “fuck off into the sun”; give them a chance to decide for themselves, instead of assuming that your interest – nascent or not – is an imposition on them that pressures them into a decision they don’t want to make. If you’re especially worried, you can lay your interest out there and then take a step back and let them affirmatively close the gap. But first you have to lay your interest out.
So if you want my advice… give yourself permission to not just want, but to express that want instead of holding back. Let yourself be willing to say “ok, this may be a little forward but here goes,” just to see how it feels.
Maybe that will unlock something for you and you’ll finally find yourself free to pursue the relationships you want in the way you actually want, instead of the way you feel like you “should”. Or maybe it’ll show you that you actually prefer to take things a different way, and you’ll have more clarity in the right way for you to pursue things and the people you would want to pursue them with.
But it all starts with giving yourself permission to be the person you are. You’ve done this already, so we both know you have that strength and courage. This is just one more step on the journey you’re already taking.
You’ve got this, GIMYOW.
Good luck.
