Estimated reading time: 13 minutes
Dear Dr. NerdLove:
Recently I (M/21) met a woman (F/22-ish) through mutual friends at another friend’s birthday party. Our friends more or less pushed us together and said “you two would get along” and walked off. It was a little embarrassing and we both agreed that it was awkward, but they had good intentions.
What was surprising is that they weren’t wrong. She (I’ll call her “Eliza”) and I had a lot in common, studied the same major at different universities, liked a lot of the same music, had similar sense of humor, that sort of thing. She wasn’t my usual type, but still very cute. She added me on WhatsApp before she left and we talked on there almost every day. Since our schedules lined up, we would get lunch on Thursdays and just hang out for a bit before we both had to go. This has been our routine for a few months now.
I think you know where this is going: I got a pretty intense infatuation with Eliza in short order. I told her how I felt and asked if she wanted to go on a date. She very gently told me that she wasn’t looking for a relationship right now and added that she thought she might be asexual. I told her that was fine and asked if it was ok if I took a step back for a little bit to let things settle. She told me that this was fine and she hoped that we could still be friends. I said “Of course!” and then she said “please don’t say that unless you really mean it.
Apparently she’s got a history of guys who either get weird after she tells them she might be asexual and it hurt when she kept meeting guys who would try to be friends but thought they could change her mind or something.
It’s been a couple of weeks and I can honestly say that I think my feelings have settled. I still like her and I would love it if things were different, but I miss hanging out with her at our lunches and talking about our weeks. I’ve reached out and said “hey, want to get lunch at our usual time?” and while she seems to be interested, she’s seemed hesitant. We have a tentative lunch in a couple of weeks, and I don’t want to push it between now in then.
I don’t blame her for being cautious, since other guys have been shitty about things. I would really like to be her friend with no strings or agendas outside of going to see a movie or hanging out and doing friend stuff. How do I let Eliza know I’m totally down with being her friend and that I’m not trying to sneak into her pants or something?
Lets Get Platonic!
I think you’re worrying more than is actually warranted, LGP, but I understand it. You care about what Eliza thinks and don’t want to be yet another horrible dude in a parade of horribles who see “let’s just be friends” as a challenge or who hears an unspoken “…change my mind” when someone says “I’m not interested in sex, full stop.” Ironically enough, the fact that you are concerned about not being one of those guys is precisely why you’re worried; assholes generally don’t concern themselves with the feelings and trust of the person they’re trying to woo. That’s what make them assholes.
What I think may help is to understand things from Eliza’s perspective. Anyone who’s dealt with Nice GuysTM tends to be a little gun-shy around people – mostly, but not exclusively men – who pull the Platonic Best Friend Back Door Gambit. There’s a specific sort of pain that comes from finding out that someone you thought was a friend, especially a good friend that you trusted and let into your emotional space, was doing so under false pretenses. And that sort of pain grows exponentially when you merge it with folks who think that someone being on the asexuality spectrum just means they haven’t met the right dick. It’s a little akin to folks who watch 500 Days of Summer without twigging to the fact that Tom has a bad case of Main Character disease and doesn’t think of Summer except in how she relates to him.
So while you did a mature thing – saying “hey, I’m cool with being your fiend, I just want to give myself some time to reframe things and let my feelings cool off” – it’s almost certainly a line that Eliza’s heard before. Possibly multiple times. As a result, like a lot of other well-meaning dudes out there, you are going to be dealing with the consequences of other shitty people’s behaviors because pattern recognition is a thing and you almost certainly tripped that pattern without realizing it.
The thing that’s going to be important is to remember the MegaForce mantra: Deeds, Not Words, because talk is cheap and anyone can just say shit. And frequently do. Which is to say: it’s going to be your behavior that’ll reassure Eliza that you’re on the up and up, not what you say.
This is why, for example, I’m not a big fan of doing things like “talk about the other women you’re interested in”. Leaving aside that right now there may not be other people, that’s one of the performative dances that Crouching Nice Guy/Hidden Douche Canoes do. In fact, that’s a technique that some dating coaches and red pill gurus teach – they’re trying to create a sort of “jealousy plotline” to “trigger women’s competitive instincts” by creating the impression that the person using it is a hot commodity.
There’s also the fact that sometimes people may think they’re telling the truth, only to find out that they’re not. As an example, one of the things that tripped me up back in the bad old days was telling an ex “hey, don’t worry, I’m totally over you.” I thought it was true at the time, but as we would both realize later… it wasn’t. It’s still an open question as to who I was trying to convince, her or myself, but the outcome was the same.
It’s going to be more important is that you behave like the two of you are just friends, which may well mean that your dynamic is going to be different for a while. Trying to pick back up like nothing has changed is a nice idea, but if you were at all flirty or behaving like you thought there was a chance that she might be interested in dating or sleeping with you and you resume that behavior, I could see Eliza feeling like this is just another case of history repeating.
While I don’t think you need to be so platonic and hands-off that you could be mistaken for a very polite robot, I do think that being a little friendly-but-cautious isn’t a bad idea. One thing that may help is to stick to resuming your weekly lunches, but leaving it at that for a little while. While it’s no guarantee, because there are no guarantees where other people’s feelings are involved, taking things slow is a good start while the two of you figure out what your friendship will look like going forward.
If it helps, think of how you might build a friendship with another guy that you kinda know but not well; you aren’t going to be stand-offish, but you’re also not going to leap to invite them over to play Madden right away. You build on those weak ties over time and gradually increasing the bids for emotional connection – whether asks or offered – over time as the friendship progresses. While there might be a little stiffness at first, as you show through your behavior that you’re a cool guy who genuinely just wants to be friends, that stiffness will fade and you’ll both be able to relax into your new friendship.
It will be important to recognize that there isn’t a timeline where she’ll be able to relax and trust that you’re being honest. A lot will depend on how often she’s been through this process. The fact that she’s given you a “yes” for the near future is a good sign; it’s a cautious and tentative gesture to see how things go. As long as you don’t push things or aggressively show how cool-with-it-all that you are, I think you’ll be ok. While I don’t believe in hard and fast rules, in this case, I think that it may be best if you let things sit until the day before your lunch and then just double check that you’re still on.
It may take a bit of time for the two of you to figure out your new dynamic and that’s ok. Move forward with care and consideration for her, show her through your actions that you’re sincere and trustworthy and you’ll build a great, platonic relationship with her.
Good luck.
Dear Dr. NerdLove:
I don’t have a specific dating question but more of a meta question if you will: what’s with all the “rules” around dating?
I’m in my early 40s, a year out from finalizing my divorce (amicably, I might add) and dipping my toe back in the dating scene. It’s been more years than I care to count since I last actually dated anyone (we’ll just say it’s double digits and leave it there) and I’m not going to lie, I barely dated before then. I had a meet cute with the woman who would become my wife and that was basically that.
Since I started trying to date again, it feels like I’m always doing something “wrong”, either with the people I’m dating or according to the advice I find on the internet. I text too much, or I text too soon, or not enough. I’m showing my hand too early when I say I’m looking for something long term, but if I don’t say what I want early on then I’m history’s greatest monster. I had a couple of women cancel dates on me before we even went on them when they found out that I had gone on or would be going on dates with other people, despite the fact that we had only just gotten to the point of agreeing to go on a date after matching on Hinge.
I realize that I’ve been out of the scene since before the Internet was more than a modem screaming at us, but I swear it didn’t feel this complicated back then. Where do I find my copy of this self-contradictory rulebook so I can find out that I shouldn’t order red wine on a date if the moon is in the second house during a month that ends in R?
Unfrozen Caveman Bachelor
This is easy, UCB; there’re “rules” because there are no rules and that makes people uncomfortable.
OK, let me try that again, but slightly more helpful: dating requires vulnerability and uncertainty, and that makes people uncomfortable. We’re a species that feels the most secure when we feel like we have some measure of control about things in our lives, especially when we have to open ourselves up to the possibility of being hurt. It especially doesn’t help that we can sink time and effort and emotional investment in the process, only to have it crumble to dust in front of us. We like predictability, and so we want to believe that we have some sort of influence on the outcome. So we make rules in order to impose the illusion of control and convince ourselves that if we just follow those rules, then everything will work out well.
Yes, I realize how odd it is for someone who tells people what to do on dates and writes columns talking about “the rules” to say this. Stick with me, I promise it’ll make sense by the time we’re done.
The problem is that love is a game where the rules are all made up and the points don’t mean anything, and yet we all pretend that following the rules will either give us the result that we want or will prevent us from getting hurt. And it really doesn’t help when those rules are not only completely arbitrary but are all ultimately based around the culture, values and beliefs around sex and gender and relationships that we hold on to. This is how you end up with books like, well, The Rules or The Game, which are not only diametrically opposed to one another and often out of step with dating culture at the time, but are internally contradictory.
(We will ignore the fact that The Game was never intended as an instruction manual in the first place, since very few people of the folks who bought it ever treated it as anything but that.)
In both cases, the ultimate goal is to connect with someone emotionally, but both insist that the way to do so involves putting up barriers to that connection. If you were to date someone who followed the instructions of either book to the letter, you would be forgiven for wondering if that person even liked you, never mind wanted to have a relationship with you.
This is why so many of the “rules” of dating seem to make no sense; they’re an attempt to impose structure on something that inherently resists structure and guarantee an outcome that is impossible to guarantee. At best, what you have are guidelines and strongly worded suggestions. At worst… well, you have something that other people can use to feel smugly superior to you and pretend that they would never be in your shoes, because admitting that all the rules are arbitrary would mean that they don’t know what they’re doing either and that is going to sit like a popcorn hull between their teeth.
It also means that folks will lose their minds when people who seem to “break” those rules still succeed; it feels unfair or like there’s a two-tier system when the reality is that the folks who do things “wrong” and still get dates or find love tend to be socially well-calibrated and understand both themselves and the people they’re most interested in. It’s not that there’s one set of rules for hot people and a different one for ugly people, or for jocks and a different one for nerds or any other false dichotomy you care to make. There’re just folks who figured out what works for them and how to apply them, and folks who are still trying to find theirs. And the hard truth is that figuring it out almost always comes down to experience born from trial and error and filtering for people they’re most likely to be compatible with.
While there are some best practices that are worth following, especially while you’re getting your metaphorical sea legs under you, these are closer to training wheels that help you find what works for you. They aren’t going to be universally applicable for everyone you meet or for all stages of your life. In fact, over time, you’ll have instances where they may get in the way, rather than help. That’s why they’re thought of as “best practices”, rather than treating them as though they were handed down on stone tablets.
That’s why, at the end of the day, only “rules” that are worth following are the ones that actually help you and resonate with who you authentically are. If you’re an enthusiastic texter, trying to pretend you’re not isn’t going to help. This is why going with the general flow of the conversation works best instead of trying to follow rigid “who texts how many times” rules. If you know what you want and are looking for someone who wants the same thing, then holding off until “the right time” only serves to make it more likely that you’re going to meet folks who aren’t on the same page as you. While you don’t want to give people the impression that you’re looking to get married tomorrow, pretending that you’re just exploring your options or that you’re “looking for short-term, open to long”, doesn’t help.
Yeah, it’s frustrating that sometimes you’re going to learn the “rules” that work best for you through failure. That’s just how learning works most of the time. But finding what works for you and what resonates with you is what will help cut down a lot of the noise and false positives and help you find the right people in the long run.
It may not seem like it now, but finding your own “rules” will save a hell of a lot of time and heartbreak than trying to follow rules that never fit you.
Good luck.
