Estimated reading time: 13 minutes
Dear Dr. NerdLove: I’m a college sophomore and I have a good male friend who has luck with women that I don’t understand. He’s not particularly tall, in great shape or especially good looking, but he is insanely confident with women and women really seem to like him back. He’s had a string of girlfriends that he would describe as being “out of his league”, and I don’t get it at all.
I know what this sounds like so I want to be clear that when I say that I don’t understand it, what I mean isn’t that he’s not looksmaxxing enough or whatever. I’m not complaining that he’s getting girls that he “shouldn’t” be able to or that there’s anything unfair going on. I mean that I literally don’t understand what he’s doing and why it works, and I would like to, because I would like to be able to do too, and I feel like I might be able to if I knew what it was he was doing.
Every time I try to talk to girls I think are hot, not even as hot as some of the ones he’s dated, I panic. And that’s if I even talk to them in the first place. My friend has never been afraid or shy around girls, he can just go up and joke around with them like he’s known them forever. When I asked him, he told me that he just talks to them like people. Great, no shit, that seems obvious but it doesn’t answer my question? Because I know they’re people and I still can’t do it. This is why I don’t understand it and I want to, and I’m a big enough man to admit that I would like to be more like him.
I feel like this is a skill that I should be able to learn, so how do I rank up and pick up this skill? Or do I need to do a complete respec which doesn’t exist in life?
The Not-So-Strong Silent Type
This is less a skill and more of an attitude, NSSST, and it’s one that’s easy to explain because it’s very simple. But the fact that something is simple doesn’t mean it’s easy; if anything, the simpler answers can be the hardest to put into practice.
When your says he’s talking to them like they’re people, what he means is that he’s comfortable with them and isn’t being intimidated by their looks or their accomplishments.
I’m sure you may have heard incredibly conventionally hot women – actresses, models or women who are just very good looking – complain about how they date a lot less than people think; very few people hit on them or ask them out because they all either think they’ve got boyfriends or because the guys are too intimidated by them. A lot of shitty men will get angry at these women and call them liars, insisting that they clearly get hit on all the time.
As much as it pains me to do so, the shitty men aren’t entirely wrong, in as much as that those women are often on the receiving end of a lot of attention. The issue is – as I’ve often said – that the quantity of attention paid isn’t the same as the quality; the number of people spitting game at someone doesn’t really help if it’s all a bunch of dudes who see her as an accomplishment or a trophy. But once you filter out the obvious creeps and people who treat women like they’re out on a sex safari… the women are right; dudes tend to make a lot of assumptions about them. Those assumptions aren’t always about the relationship status; the assumptions are often about the woman’s social “value” or “status” by virtue of being hot, about whether they could possibly be interested in someone who isn’t as equally attractive (that whole “looksmatch”/”assortive mating” shit that everyone misunderstands) and so on. So a guy who is willing to come talk to them and isn’t an obvious chud is a refreshing experience.
Where things get complicated is that a lot of guys already know this; the guy who is able to see past her looks has been part and parcel of love stories for ages. As a result, a lot of said chuds devote to getting good at pretending that they don’t care. In a lot of ways, it’s similar to people who try to pretend that they’re not interested in someone’s money or social clout but are trying to “make friends” in order to exploit that person’s connections or advantages; they fake not caring in order to get close and then use them as a stepping stool.
This is the entire basis for what the PUA community would come to call “negging” that then broke containment, spread like cancer and mutated into bros calling women filthy stinky pirate-whores at bars. The point wasn’t to just insult women and trigger weird daddy issues or break their ego, it was (theoretically) to signal that you aren’t intimidated by her looks and the social clout this supposedly gives her.
Of course, people aren’t dumb – even when people are very invested in believing they are. Women, in particular, pay attention and talk. As a result, they tend to hone their Spidey-sense, get skilled at spotting fakers and, as a result, try to get said fakers to go away without causing a scene.
This is part of where the concept of “bitch shields” and “shit tests” came about – from dudes who treated dating like a Cold War arms race, rather than realizing women could read and The Game wasn’t exactly secret knowledge.
(Like most PUA beliefs, it should be remembered that all of this originated with a bunch of dudes trying to pick up women in the Los Angeles club scene in the early 00’s; a very specific environment and culture that attracted very specific personality types.)
The upshot is that when women run into someone who genuinely has no agenda, who isn’t intimidated by their looks or clout or what-have-you, and who just treats them like everyone else, it can feel like every muscle has just unclenched. They can relax. Combine that with some basic flirting, social skills, authenticity and ability to make the other person feel safe, and you have a very potent combination that works very well for building attraction and connection.
Now, the key words here are “genuine” and “authentic”. It’s not “you can fake not having an agenda with the best of them” or “you can pretend that you don’t know they’re hot”. It has to be sincere, and that’s not something that can be taught or picked up through anything but practice.
The precise way people develop this authenticity varies, but it’s always through experience; the key is that for the ones who seem to have it “naturally” is that they simply got that experience earlier than others, often without realizing it. Some folks – and I suspect your friend may be one of them – have experiences that make it easier for them to be comfortable with women. It could be a matter of having female friends or growing up with siblings. It could be a matter of exposure; people who study performing arts like acting or dance spend lots of time interacting closely with attractive people and that makes them lose a lot of mystery and blunts the intimidation factor. The thing that unites all of them is simply that they’re just comfortable with women and being real with them, and they can interact without having any agenda other than “you seem cool.”
There’re a lot of ways that you can learn to be less intimidated by attractive women; I used to go to strip clubs and practice making small talk with the dancers who come over and see how long we could keep a conversation going before they asked me for a dance. Not flirting, just basic ‘so, what’re you into when you’re not here’ chit-chat. It went a long way to being able to talk with incredibly hot people without fearing that my blood was leaving my brain for points south and I often ended up leaving the club with a number of really good book recommendations. Turns out a surprising number of dancers are also geeks and love to talk about their favorite shows and series.
(I also would tip them the price of a dance or two for their time, even if I didn’t end up getting one from them; they are working, after all.)
The most important thing, however, is the authenticity and the lack of an agenda. You don’t want to try to flirt or behave like your friend does, because you’re not him. You want to be your authentic self. That may even be just accepting that you can be a little intimidated by someone’s looks or be nervous around them at first, but to just power through anyway by focusing on just getting to know them and asking questions. Adorkable is a thing, after all, and the idea of “shy but doing it anyway” can be incredibly powerful in the right hands.
So, don’t worry as much about duplicating your friend’s skill set. Understanding the why is far more important. The what and how should reflect who you are, rather than being a second generation copy of him.
Good luck.
Hello Doc!
So, I’ve dealt with constant daydreaming, self-harm and anxiety (and still do, to some degree) and have been working on myself for quite some time: finally got an internship, finished some of the last college assignments (including my thesis), started going to gym and also have been doing a skincare routine for a while. I’m pretty sure that I am done with self-harm, but still struggling with my imagination and a bit of anxiety – especially when I wanna talk to someone. Despite everything, I managed to be way more social and outgoing with my college peers, and they even notice and tell me that I am more “happy” and “friendly”.
My current issue is thar typical problem: there’s a girl at class – who I’m not sure if she dates or not (and I don’t wanna stalk her and find out) – and we never talk too much in those 3 years of college, but we do talk at class sometimes and even did some work together. For some reason, my mind did a full spin and now I’m thinking about her a little more than I should – and it doesn’t help that she’s gotten more attractive.
However, I don’t know how to approach her more, flirt or anything. In fact, I don’t even know if I should be doing it at all or if I should shift my focus since these are some mild feelings & fantasies that my mind created.
Tl;dr: I’m a 21yo dude with pretty much no prior dating experience plus some past struggles with my emotions, and I’m not sure how or if I should shoot my shot with a particular person in my last semester of college or if this is just another case of limerence.
Where Do I Begin?
You’re coming at this all wrong, WDIB, starting with “I don’t know if this is just another case of limerence” and “should I shift my focus since these are some mild feelings and fantasies” and then going to “in my last semester of college”. There’s so much overthinking going on about a situation that doesn’t warrant it that it’s kind of absurd.
But hey, it’s nothing if not a learning opportunity for you, and that opportunity is this: don’t complicate things that aren’t actually complicated. Some things are a lot simpler than you’re making it out to be.
Let’s start with how you feel, because, dude, my guy, you can just find people attractive without having to worry about the origin or the strength of that attraction. There’s nothing wrong with seeing someone, thinking they’re cute or getting a crush on them. You don’t need to justify any of it or rank them on a scale that decides whether you ignore it or act on it. In general, if you think someone’s kinda cute and want to talk to them, that’s all the reason you need… as long as you keep things in perspective.
This is why the question of whether this is limerence or not isn’t really the problem. At the end of the day, limerence is a fancy way of describing puppy-love; it feels incredibly important and dramatic, but it’s only “bad” when you go from “I really like this person” to “…and so I’m going to make it everyone’s problem.” Even having daydreams or imagining spending time with them isn’t an issue until you start treating those daydreams as being more than just that: daydreams. As with other emotions, it’s not how you feel that becomes a problem, it’s what those emotions motivate you to do about them.
So if all you feel for this person is “oh shit, when did she start getting cute”… well, that’s a perfectly valid thing to feel. It’s even a perfectly valid reason to go start a conversation with them. This is where keeping things in perspective comes in. Just because what you feel for someone is just mild attraction or a crush instead of a grand passion, that doesn’t mean you need to set it aside, nor do you need to wait for interest to reach a certain threshold to do something with it or about it. You have a crush. They happen. You’ll have others in the future. You can decide to do something about it, or you can decide to let be. It’s not exactly a life-altering decision you’re making here.
But part of that perspective is understanding not just what you feel, but what you actually know about this person. This is where limerence can be a problem, because limerence often leads people to assume virtues where they haven’t seen any or to ignore vices that they have seen. It’s not that love makes you blind, so much as if you don’t have much experience, it’s easy to let that limerence fill in a whole lotta blanks like a LLM inventing answers out of nothing but the probability that the next word would be X instead of Y.
That lack of information and filling in blanks is why you’re getting spun out over this and getting out over your skis about what to do. If you take a step back and look at things dispassionately as possible, then the situation is simple: you know her very casually but haven’t interacted much, and she’s cute. That’s it. You know next to nothing of significance about her. That includes hobbies and interests, political affiliation, hell, even whether she’s someone who dates or is romantically interested in men, women, everyone or no one.
Fortunately, there’s an easy way to fix this. You can start filling in these blanks and starting the process of deciding whether or not she’s even someone you might want to actually date instead of just imagine dating by talking to her. Literally just have a conversation and see what comes up. Ask questions, listen to her answers, relate to the answer and use that as a springboard to ask another question so you can get to know her better.
Part of the reason why your anxiety comes into play is because you’re invested in an outcome – which you don’t even know if you should be invested in, seeing as you barely know her – and because you’re not used to talking with people you’re into. Well, as I’ve said many times before: being comfortable just talking to women without an agenda is like a superpower. And rather than needing to find the Crimson Crystal Chatterbox of Cyttorak or being bitten by a radioactive talk show host, it’s a power you can develop through deliberate practice.
So, before you start beating yourself up about whether you should flirt and shoot your shot or not, how about you just, y’know, talk to her and get to know her a little better? No agendas, no trying to figure out if you should shoot your shot, just really basic “getting to know you” small-talk and see who she is as a person. For all you know, if you talk about more than class work, you may find that she’s just not your type at all.
And whether she is or she isn’t, just getting comfortable with talking with people in general and women you find attractive in particular will pay dividends in the future.
TL;DR: slow your roll and stop assuming that this is an all-or-nothing situation. The only reason you need to talk to someone is that they seem like they might be interesting to talk to. Attraction is fine and dandy, but focus on getting to know someone as a person before deciding that you need to shoot your shot or not. Get comfortable with that and the rest will start flowing a lot more easily.
Good luck.
