Estimated reading time: 15 minutes
Dear Dr. NerdLove,
I struggle to understand my own desirability as a man. I don’t really know what it feels like to be wanted, what that looks like in the real world, or how I’m even supposed to go about having a sex life.
On paper, I should be doing fine. I’m tall, dark, and conventionally handsome. I’m lean with good muscularity. I’m socially capable and confident in every other area of my life. I’d say I have both the looks and the character, and the feedback I receive from others seems to confirm this. Despite this, women don’t appear to show much interest in me. I show up and socialise with the women I do meet, but despite positive interactions and relationships, there’s never any chemistry or hint of interest on their part. I’ve never been on a date or had a “talking phase”. What makes this harder to reconcile is that men who are, by most conventional measures, less attractive or seemingly less put together than me, seem to have little trouble having sex and forming relationships.
Things are further complicated by the fact that I’m not sexually inexperienced, and would actually say I’m more experienced than average. I’ve hung out with a lot of social circles over the years, with a good number of women, but it was always simply a case of “right place, right time”. Those experiences were always fleeting. I felt more like a placeholder than someone genuinely desired, and each time I was quickly replaced by someone they appeared far more interested in.
Still, despite my previous experiences and positive attributes, I cannot accept the idea of me being a sexually desirable man.
Over time, this disconnect has contributed to a complicated relationship with pornography. I’ve never binged for hours, used it in inappropriate situations, or escalated into extreme material, but it has become a crutch for loneliness. I’ve tried to quit many times over the years. When I don’t use it, I feel noticeably better, and life seems to respond positively, such as my social interactions improving. I’m clean at the moment, yet I still find myself constantly thinking about it. On one hand, I get lost in the fantasy; on the other, I try to dismantle it by acknowledging the exploitation, coercion, addiction, and abuse that are so prevalent in the industry. Even though I understand intellectually that what I’m seeing is staged and performed by paid actors, quite possibly by people who don’t want to be there, I can’t shake the expressions of enthusiasm, even when I can also see the track marks. I’m jealous of them, because after all these are real men and women having sex with each other. It all occupies my thoughts far more than I’d like. In a sense I feel “left out”, and this made even worse with the increasing number of amateur content. If I lived in the U.S., I think I might have been tempted to join the industry myself. I don’t understand how people in general move towards sexual relationships.
So here I am, in my mid-thirties, feeling like the most undesirable man alive, with a dark shadow hanging over my head, making it even harder to believe that I could ever be genuinely wanted.
To finish, the irony in all of this is that while I may have some sexually deviant fantasies and wouldn’t mind more casual experiences, what I ultimately want is a happy, healthy, monogamous relationship. The fantasy of taking part in an orgy, for example, is just that – a fantasy born of loneliness and a porn-addled brain. Yet I can’t shake the idea that something is so deeply wrong with me, that no wonder would desire me.
Want You To Want Me
As I am wont to do, WYTWM, let me start my answer to your question with a question: what, precisely, would you need to see from a woman to accept that she genuinely desires you?
I ask because you are hardly the first person to ask this question and – like most who do – it seems like the issue is less about being desired and more about seeing a performance of desire… one that you could actually accept as being genuine. Which is ironic, since the performative nature of it tends to imply playing someone’s feelings up to an absurd and unrealistic degree.
If I’m being honest, I think a lot of this comes down to three things that all tie together like horny snakes. The first is simply how you feel about yourself. The second is how you feel about sex itself. The third is not understanding the social context of when and how women express interest and desire and what that means for women.
The first is very simple: you don’t believe in your own desirability, and so you don’t accept evidence that isn’t presented in very specific and easily understood ways. What you’re essentially asking for from women is for them to overcome your inner doubts, and to do so in such a way that your confirmation bias can’t override what you’re seeing.
The thing is: this isn’t going to help you. What you’re asking for is not just a form of external validation, but a form of external validation that is more costly for the women around you (put a pin in that…) and ultimately cannot do what you’re asking for. You’re hoping that sufficiently overt expressions of desire will finally convince you that you’re attractive and sexy and close that hole in the center of your being. It won’t, simply because that hole can’t be filled from the outside.
I’m sorry to break this to you, but there really isn’t any way for external validation to do what you need it to. Other people can’t make your self-limiting beliefs go away because those beliefs are precisely what they say on the tin: they’re self-limiting. You’re not being restrained or restricted by another person, you’re doing this to yourself. The call is coming from inside the house. Even if you found someone who put on a performance of horniness that would make Lisa Ann say “ok, that’s a bit much,” you would think it’s a joke, a prank or not even understand what they were doing.
Just do a search on Buzzfeed or Reddit or Tumblr or BlueSky for people telling stories about how they missed glaringly obvious signals that someone wanted to fuck them. Hell, I can tell you from personal experience that this happens: back in college, I missed out on multiple hook-up invitations, including one from someone who explicitly asked me back to their dorm rooms to watch porn with them, because I couldn’t conceive of the idea that they actually wanted to have sex with me.
But even if you do accept that someone might actually want to bang, that reassurance would only last as long as it took before your brain latched on to the smallest, flimsiest excuse it could find to negate everything. And it will find that excuse, because you’ll be looking for one. That’s how confirmation bias works – you pay attention and give credence to the things that confirm and reinforce what you already believe, while ignoring, overlooking or rationalizing away the things that contradict what you believe. And then the negativity bias inherent in humanity would ensure that those flimsy rationalizations hit five times harder than direct and unmistakable signs of lust.
You do this in your letter. You talk about being more sexually experienced than average, yet this just somehow proves that you’re not because… reasons. It can’t just be that someone can be attracted to you and want to have sex and then move on, they have to be with someone else because that other person is “better” than you. More desirable than you. Just more than you.
But consider: can you see yourself having a one-night stand with someone that you don’t then go on to date, without it being because someone else was “better”? Can you see yourself having a casual hook up with someone that is ultimately just about that person at that time, without it being a referendum on their desirability compared to others?
If you can see yourself recognizing this truth about people you have fucked or may fuck, why can’t you see and accept other people can feel the same way about you? It’s not that you’re some special visionary; it’s about how you see yourself.
This is why you have to change what you believe, rather than rely on other people to do it for you. If you don’t, it won’t change – not the way you hope and not for good. The next time you perceive a slight hitch or that someone else isn’t equally as overt or just isn’t interested, despite your being the hottest thing since World War III will bring it all crashing down.
What compounds this issue that the sort of behavior and signaling you seem to be hoping for often isn’t how women show interest. This isn’t biological, but cultural – specifically that society punishes women for being overtly sexual except in specific and “approved” ways, and even those are contingent on class, race and conventional attractiveness. Sabrina Carpenter caught shit for weeks for the cover art for “Man’s Best Friend”, because it was not only overtly sexual but also submissive and not seen as “empowering”. The fact that it’s seen with her in a submissive role is “degrading”, even if a) that may well be precisely the kind of sex she wants or enjoys and b) the whole thing is symbolic of how she feels she’s been treated in relationships, rather than “this is how I like to fuck”.
But Sabrina Carpenter is a conventionally attractive white woman. Someone who isn’t one or all of those things experience very different reactions to overt displays of sexual confidence and desires. A sexually confident and forward fat woman is an object of ridicule – how could she possibly think she’s attractive? How funny is it that she’s horny? Black and Latina women who emphasize their sexuality in assertive, even aggressive ways get slut-shamed and told they’re being low-class – just look at how folks respond to black women in rap and hip-hop. Women who do sexual performance – including OnlyFans models, dancers and porn actresses – are accused of having daddy issues, drug addictions or otherwise being “broken” in some fundamental way. Meanwhile, their overt sexual behavior is treated as though it devalues and degrades them… despite the fact that they are doing so for the entertainment and desire of an audience that clearly wants to see these sorts of sexual presentations.
And not to put too fine a point on it… you indulge in this dichotomy as well. You try to de-emphasize the eroticism of porn by trying to remind yourself of the supposed darkness of it all – the drug addiction, the coercion, etc. – rather than just accepting it as a performance. If you can accept that Vin Diesel isn’t a borderline sociopathic space murderer or that Jason Statham isn’t a retired super-spy and is just playing a role, or that a ballet dancer isn’t actually a princess enchanted to be a swan, why is it so hard to accept that someone is putting on an over-the-top performance of sex for a paycheck?
And it is over the top; as porn performers themselves can tell you, the sex they have for themselves doesn’t look like what you see on screen – from the positions to the screams – any more than the fight scenes in a Jason Statham film look like fights in real life.
But this ties into what I said about how you view sex and sexual desire – you clearly have conflicting and complicated feelings about sex and your own sexuality. For one, you refer to abstaining from jerking it to porn as being “clean” – echoing language of addiction and disease. It’s a mental framing that you’re harming yourself and the problem is the porn. But masturbation, fantasy or even porn aren’t inherently bad or harmful; the issue isn’t the porn, the issue is that you’re using porn to self-medicate, and doing so in a way that is causing you distress.
The same goes with splitting your sexual desires between the “unacceptable” and “bad” – those “deviant” desires, like casual hook-ups or group sex – and “good” ones in the context of a monogamous commitment. Leaving aside that group sex is hardly “deviant” or even unusual – sex with multiple partners is one of the top 7 most common fantasies – sex with a committed partner is no better or worse than casual sex or any other form of sex with consenting partners. Some may find it distasteful, sure… and they don’t have to have those kinds of sex.
But the fact that you call those desires “deviant” is, much like using the language of addiction around porn, the tell. You don’t need to justify having fantasies about participating in orgies; you can just enjoy them, for no reason other than because you think orgies are hot as hell. It’s fine!
The problem isn’t your desire, it’s the way you feel about sex, and that’s playing into your not feeling desirable. This internal conflict – that you want sex, and some of the sex you want is “bad” – means that you don’t feel that you should be desired, and it sounds a lot to me like you’re hoping that someone else’s overt desire for you will tell you that it’s ok to want these things too.
This is precisely why I keep saying that the call is coming from inside the house. The house is your head. It’s all in your head. And that’s where the solution has to come from as well.
You have to be willing to believe in yourself and your desirability first, without relying on someone else to give you “permission” to believe it. You have to be your biggest fan, the first and founding member of your own fan club and your number one hype man, regardless of what others think. You have to be willing to not just think you’re hot, but be unashamed and unapologetic of thinking you’re hot. Even when people disagree with you.
In fact, especially when people disagree with you.
And while I can already hear a thousand fingers reaching for hundreds of keyboards and touchscreens: no, this isn’t absurd, paradoxical or impossible. It’s simply recognizing that things can be, without the agreement, buy-in or approval of others. Popularity isn’t an indicator of quality – Justin Bieber has sold more albums than the Beatles and Fleetwood Mac combined. John Carpenter’s The Thing was panned by critics and a box-office disaster, but it’s heralded as one of the best, most imaginative and influential horror movies of all time.
If someone hates your favorite food, does that mean that you’re wrong and that food is no longer delicious? If someone tells you that the movie you love is, in fact, bad, do you stop loving it? Or can you simply accept that someone may not like that particular dish, that people cannot see what you see in a movie or enjoy what you enjoy?
The same applies to how you feel about yourself. Other people can disagree; they can have poor taste, they can simply not comprehend your sexiness, they can be deluded or just have different opinions… but their opinions don’t matter. Not nearly as much as yours does.
You can certainly bolster your feeling about yourself with affirmation and validation from folks whose judgement and opinions you trust. You may even take those people’s opinions into consideration if you feel like you want to make a change. But at the end of the day, the deciding vote and most important opinion has to be yours.
Once you start letting yourself accept it and believe it, then you’ll start actually seeing the evidence. And to be clear: the evidence was always there; you ignored it, dismissed it or handwaved it away when you didn’t believe.
Getting there is going to be hard, because it requires not just self-acceptance but self-approval. You have to be willing to fully acknowledge your good qualities, to gas yourself up and own that you like yourself. You have to be willing to love yourself unabashedly and recognize that while some folks may not see your value, that’s their problem, not yours.
How do you get there? Well, to start with: engage with your body. Your body is your instrument, so learn how to play it. I always recommend learning how to dance, especially dances that engage your whole body, because dancing is a sensual and ecstatic experience. Knowing how to move, how to follow rhythm, how motion at one speed implies strength or dominance, while motion at another speed implies sexuality and sensuality – these remind you of just what you’re capable of.
The same goes with dressing well, in ways that resonate with who you are and make you feel like a sexy motherfucker. Enclothed cognition is a thing; dress like you think you would if you were hot and you’ll be surprised at how hot you feel.
But you should do things that aren’t necessarily about sex, but do make you feel good about yourself, too. This is where having things that feed your soul, things that bring meaning and purpose to your life are important – it solidifies your sense of worth and value overall. Attraction and desirability, after all, is a holistic issue; a thin layer of sexuality isn’t going to be load-bearing enough to hold everything up if you don’t think you’ve got value in general.
And while you’re thinking about how you feel, don’t forget to think about how others feel… and more importantly how you can make them feel. Desire isn’t just physical, it’s emotional. If you can make someone feel good – whether through laughter, personal warmth, generosity, excitement, an experience, whatever – you become that much hotter in their eyes.
And that includes being willing to show desire, especially in subtle ways. A warm look in your eyes that suggest a particular hunger, a slight but confident smile, a gesture that’s deliberate but graceful and gentle, a soft touch that lingers just a second longer than expected… all of those are things that work magic on people.
Just as importantly: embrace what you like and what turns you on. Part of what made Prince – a short king and avowed weirdo – so goddamn magnetic was that he was unabashedly horny and sexual, and let that into his music and performance. Kiss, Darling Nikki, Get Off, When Dove’s Cry… none of these would have the impact they do if you felt like he was apologizing for his desires. If you think liking group sex makes you a freak, then fine, let your freak flag fly. It’s not deviance, it’s exclusivity – you have to be this cool to ride. Let other freaks know there’s someone they can get their freak on with. The less you treat your desire as something you have to make excuses for, the less you’re going to have to fight to feel desirable.
I’d also suggest that you look at work that’s written for women, especially that’s been written by other women. Part of why Heated Rivalry is so hot is that you’re seeing male sexuality and emotion being portrayed in ways that isn’t the objectifying, predatory way that shows up so often in pop culture. Women are seeing men being sexual and expressing that sexuality in ways that turns women on. Romance novels likewise will list volumes of the things that trigger and inspire desire in women, if you’re willing to invest the time and push past the trap of focusing on what men think women want.
Find your desirability in yourself, WYTWM, and you’ll start seeing that desire reflected outside of yourself… and especially in the eyes of many of the people you desire.
Good luck.
