Estimated reading time: 18 minutes
Dear Doctor, I’m not sure if this is something you actually help with, but I need to get this off my chest.
I have a tight-knit circle of friends. We all met in the early days of our freshman year in high-school and it was friendship at first sight for pretty much all of us. We all have the same story – we met one another (or the squad, really, as it was starting to build when some of us came along) and we all just clicked together like Legos. Since then, we’ve had our ups and downs, our stupid dramas, relationships that came and went and we’re all still very tight. We’ve been each other’s found family, as cliche as that sounds these days.
But over the last few years, I’ve really started to feel like the odd man out, in a lot of ways. It started around our senior year, where folks noticed that a lot of us were at the top of our classes or extra-curriculars – one of us (“Jason”) was the varsity track team star, another (“Rosa”) missed being class valedictorian by a tenth of a point in her GPA, two (“Milos” and “Michael”) are the backbone that holds up the school’s theater department and “Ronnie” has a band that’s starting to get real attention.
Then there’s me, where the best I can say is that I’m the “funny” one, but I’m otherwise unremarkable in any way, shape or form. There are days I feel more like a mascot than a contributing member of the squad. Barely made it through with a C- average and that was because I worked my ass off in the last half of the year to avoid having to repeat my senior year. Not that it mattered as much because unlike my friends, I knew I wasn’t going to college anyway.
In fact, it’s college that’s made things especially hard. Most of us didn’t go to the same school, but we all stayed in our city after graduation (it’s easy when there are multiple separate colleges, universities and community colleges) or a short drive away, so we still see each other regularly. They’re now juniors, and everything that made them special in high-school has continued to make them special – they’re athletes or artistic geniuses (or a literal genius; Rosa is graduating a year early) and then there’s me, working as a mechanic at my uncle’s garage and living in the apartment over the garage because it was more affordable than living in the heart of the city where my friends live.
I love my friends and I know they care for me. Rosa was the one who helped tutor me to make sure that I got to graduate with everyone, Milos and Michael took me in when my parents kicked me out for being queer. But that’s also the problem: I feel like I’m a burden that they’re having to carry. They’re these rock gods or athletic stars or academic wonders and I’m the charity case they took on. I just feel like I could disappear in the night and while they’d be sad for a bit, they could continue like nothing changed because I’m the one who’s just there, taking up space.
It’s embarrassing saying this because I feel like an angsty teenager complaining on a podcast nobody listens to or making manifestos on 4chan, but it’s true. My friends are awesome rock stars and I’m a nobody. I don’t resent them, I just feel like an appendix to the group: not really noticeable until it goes bad and can be removed without issue.
What do I do? Is there anything I can do to stop feeling like I’m the anchor that they’re having to haul around? Or is this going to be like some sad movie about someone wanting to be special so badly that he does something awful that just backfires in a hideously ironic way?
Fifth Wheel
One of the worst feelings in the world isn’t feeling like you’re a normie when you’re surrounded by demigods, it’s when someone you care for doesn’t realize how special they really are and keeps treating all the awesome things about themselves as being unimportant or explaining why they don’t count.
The way you feel is incredibly common, FW – so much so that it shows up in pop culture all the time. It doesn’t get as much attention as other tropes, but there’s a very much a “normie sidekick/team pet/mascot surrounded by physical gods” trope in TV and movies.
But there’s also just as many shows and movies that are about someone who lacks the powers or abilities of their peers, yet whose own uniqueness makes them their equal.
In fact, I feel like you should watch some episodes from the first three seasons of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer and then settle in to watch the S3, E13 – The Zeppo. Xander Harris is decidedly the normie in a social group that includes a functional superhero, a vampire, an undercover agent of a secret mystical society, a witch and a werewolf. He is, emphatically, the odd man out of the group, and “The Zeppo” is about him trying to figure out how he contributes and how he’s afraid of being “the load”, but also getting a chance to be the main character of an episode. It serves as an example of someone who actually is capable of more than they realize, who may not be the flashiest or most visibly awesome member of the team, but who’s still incredibly capable and valuable in and of themselves… and their contributions are the more impressive for their lack of super strength, enhanced damage resistance, magical pew pew or anything else.
But while you let that all sink in, I want you to consider a couple of things. First of all: your friends helped you out in all sorts of ways, big and small… but are you going to seriously tell me that you have never helped them out too? That you never returned their love and care when they had a crisis or when they needed someone to turn to? I’m willing to bet that if you took a serious, unbiased look – one where you didn’t immediately dismiss what you did for them as “not counting” or “anyone would do that” – I’m willing to bet that the scales are damn balanced. The difference is that you see what they do as extraordinary, while what you do is mundane, normal, even expected.
The problem is that “extraordinary” is in the eye of the beholder. Stuff that seems incredible to us is normal to the person doing it, which means that to them, it’s not special or remarkable. I’m pretty sure that if you were to ask Milos and Michael, they would tell you that giving you a place to crash was quite literally the least they could do, so much a given that they’re shocked that you would even assume that someone wouldn’t. The same goes for Rosa; tutoring you may not have been her average weekday activity, but I’m betting that she didn’t see it as going above and beyond. A lot of the times, we do things for our friends and loved ones that we don’t think was a big deal… but it turns out that for them, it meant everything.
That also tends to go along with not necessarily recognizing or respecting that what you do can be important, even if it’s not as flashy or nets as much social cachet. Being “the funny one” isn’t a default fail state when you don’t have anything else; often, the person who can make everyone else laugh is the glue that holds things together and makes everyone feel better. Often, they’re the one who gives people the strength to keep on, even when things are shit. There’s a reason why the morale officer exists in the military; there’s a reason why “Bard” is a combat class.
But also, lets look at the fact that you’re a mechanic. Yeah, it’s not the glamor of being in a band (which, as most folks who’ve been in bands can tell you, ain’t that glamorous), or the prestige of academia or whatnot… but how many of them can fix a car? Being able to build, repair or modify an engine, diagnose problems with a vehicle and fix them, often in creative and unusual ways is a specialized skill, and not one that a lot of people have. That sort of skill is invaluable and one that’s vitally necessary. You’re talking it down in comparison to what you see as the high-flying, bright and shiny paths you see your friends are on but seriously: this requires skill, talent, intelligence and an understanding of mechanical engineering that most people aren’t going to have.
You just don’t see it as being special or impressive because it’s your day to day job. When you fix someone’s car and now they can get to work on time and don’t lose their job, which then would cause them to lose their house, you’ve changed their life. But to you, it’s a Tuesday.
If I’m being honest, I do wonder if some of this is feeling like you’re being left behind, rather than being the un-special one. Graduation meant the end of the time when you were all together all the time, and while you’re all still seeing each other regularly, it’s not the same as when you were all classmates. Likewise, living within your means has meant that you’re physically distanced from your friends, which I suspect contributes to this feeling. But I suspect that this also ties into the feeling that if you were as “special” as they were, you could keep up; the fact that you “fell behind” (you didn’t, but that’s the feeling you’re experiencing) “proves” that you’re not special like they are.
While I understand feeling left out or left behind because you didn’t go to college, I honestly feel like the importance of college has been overhyped to the point that people fail to recognize the value or importance of things like a trade school or an apprenticeship. There’s a lot of class issues tied into getting college degrees, I realize (which is how you can have jobs that pay literally six figures a year, but are considered “blue collar” and “lesser” than a “white collar” career as an academic or office job that makes less than half that), but college isn’t the end-all, be-all that folks make it out to be.
Leaving aside that not every career needs or requires a BA/BS, have you considered that you’re not going to be looking at a lifetime of crushing debt from college loans, while also getting a four-year jump on establishing your career while your friends are just getting started? This, too, is no small thing, especially in today’s economy and job market.
But as I said: I think the problem here is one of unfair comparison; you see your friends as being special and exceptional, because you’re comparing their highlight reels to your unedited footage. You don’t feel like you measure up, because you’re not comparing yourself to them correctly or equally; you’re overweighting their stats and underweighting your own, because yours are your state of “normal”. I think if you gave yourself more credit and didn’t dismiss the ways that you give to others and care for them, you might see that you’re much more their peer than you think.
And even if it were true – it’s not, but let’s pretend – that you were just the normie among gods… the fact that you’re able to hang at their level at all, without all their advantages? That’s pretty fucking special all of itself.
You’ve got way more going for you than you give yourself credit for, FW. You just have to stop downplaying it just because it’s you and not from someone else.
Good luck.
How do I respond to all the studies and claims that tell me I’m doomed? Every time I turn around, someone else in my life is telling me about how 10% of men are sleeping with 58% of women or how dating apps don’t work for most men because women are only interested in dating a sliver of men.
I’m 5’9”, decent but unremarkable looking, good shape but not defined or yoked, ok job, no car, live with roommates. It feels like none of this would be good enough for women and trying to get to a point where I can change or improve on any of this is just impossible. I can’t afford to pay for the leg surgery to get to 6’, nobody’s hiring for better jobs and I barely avoided getting laid off when my job decided to downsize, rents are unaffordable and people are afraid of taking the bus.
Add that to the fact that I’ve had one girlfriend and slept with a grand total of two people, one which was a mistake and I feel like there’s no hope, especially when I’m always hearing about how impossible it is to find someone and how women don’t want to date guys like me any more.
I know most of this is probably not true, but every time I argue with folks about it online I get shouted down because I can’t show how they’re wrong. But I don’t really want to prove them wrong, my problem is that I don’t know how to prove it to myself or change my own mind.
How do I stop believing I don’t have any hope and find reason to hold on when it feels like the world is telling me otherwise? Is there something you can say about what’s really happening that would give me reason to believe there’s hope for me?
Please help.
Hanging On By A Fingernail
Right off the bat, HOBAF: you don’t want the leg-lengthening surgery. It doesn’t do what you think it does, and it won’t give you 3 additional inches of height. What it will do is give you over a year of incredibly painful operations and adjustments, even more time having to do physical therapy after having functionally broken and reset your legs over and over again and then leave you with much weaker bones and a vastly heightened chance of permanent damage and horrific infections. If you do anything even vaguely athletic, you can kiss all of that goodbye for years, if not for good.
Sorry, that’s a pet peeve of mine. Anyway…
Have you ever noticed how so much of this received wisdom that keeps getting thrown around, all these “studies show” and “science says” never seems to come with actual, y’know, sources? Or when they do, it’s some YouTube “experiment” or a random poll on social media or even just a screenshot of something someone else said on a different site?
You’re not going to find a lot of scientific studies that can fit easily on a tweet or a bumper sticker, but good god damn do we love to assume that a suitably pithy statement that misappropriates an economic concept onto human relationships can be the equal of a multi-year, double blind research study.
That’s because most of the time, what they’re relying on is that you’re going to take these as gospel, without actually looking at the “science” behind it. You’ve heard of “too good to be true”? Well, this is “too true to be checked”. Even when they do have “sources” that go beyond Trust Me Bro, U, it tends to be either someone’s misinterpretation of an actual study or an edge case that has so many problems and caveats that it usually gets retracted or dismissed by the scientific community. And even then, the thing that they cite doesn’t actually say what they think it says.
Classic example: that fucking OKCupid “study”, which wasn’t a study, which folks claim says that women think most men are ugly. Which a) isn’t what it was doing (women were rating men’s profiles on the app) and b) ignores the part of that same survey which found that women were more willing and receptive to messages from a wider array of men than men were from women. In other words, while they rated most of the profiles as being unattractive, they were willing respond to messages from and go on dates with a wide array of men who they ranked as being less attractive. Men, on the other hand, were receptive to a much smaller and more restrictive array, focusing primarily on the ones they rated as the most attractive.
You also can’t make reliable social studies of dating app data that actually applies to society at large for a whole host of reasons – not the least of which being that the users of different apps aren’t uniform in terms of age, social class, politics, or appearance. Nor does it meaningfully predict or show anything about how people date, their preferences in choice of partners or any other information that we could then apply to as a broad generalization – certainly not when there’s a massive gender imbalance in the user base and the algorithm affects who sees whose profiles and when.
But it allows people to confirm their priors without actually checking, because it “feels” right, especially when said authoritatively and confidently enough by someone over and over again. The most generous read of these is that people spread it because it confirms the anxiety they feel while also excusing them from actually having to take ownership of their situation. The more cynical read is that the people pushing these takes are trying to push people into despair in order to market to them – whether commercially, politically or both.
All of it, like the whole 80/20 or 10/58 (where the fuck did that come from?) thing, or the 6-6-6 “rule”, these all fall apart if you actually look at the numbers, because none of them actually line up with reality. If any of these were actually true, we’d be seeing it everywhere – hordes of single men watching helplessly as the towering Vikings of the top 10-20% were walking around with their harems. Except they aren’t, and we actually do have the numbers.
Remember what I said about “too good to check”? Well for one thing, according to the CDC’s National Health and Nutrition Examination survey, the average American male is 5’9” and 199 lbs. Only 14% of American men are 6’ or over (and that’s measured; some studies find that in self-reports, 33% of men say they’re over 6’ tall). Less than a quarter of men earn $100,000 or more, according to YouGov. So, on height alone, 86% of all men over the age of 20 would be left out. Combine height and income and you are now saying that less than 4% of the US population is able to date.
Similarly, according to the CDC’s numbers, 40% of adult men over 20 are considered to be “obese”. This cuts down the number of people who can fit the 6-6-6 “standard” to below 1%.
This is absurd on the face of it, just looking out the window or going to Costco on any given Sunday. But again, we have numbers: Approximately half the adult population of the United States is married according to data from the US Census Bureau. And while marriage doesn’t mean people aren’t fucking around, according to the CDC’s National Survey of Family Growth, the numbers for sexually active men and women with opposite sex partners are roughly equal and growing closer to statistically even – with a median of 4 lifetime partners for women and 6 for men.
This is literally impossible under most of the rubric spread by manosphere bros and shitty dating coaches. There’s a lot of handwaving about how they’ll “fuck alphas but settle down with betas”, but again: there’s no actual numbers, no actual studies and nothing besides “dude, trust me, women are only going to marry up, never down, they’re always going to be trying to upgrade”. Which is, again, just citing “Trust Me, Bro” and appealing to people’s fear of being cuckolded or dumped.
They sell fear because fear sells. We have an inherent bias towards negativity, which makes negative thoughts, feelings, beliefs or experiences hit five times harder than positive ones. It’s easier to believe the thing you fear to be true because of that inherent bias, and so you’re understandably less inclined to question things when someone presents you with “facts” that seem to confirm what you already fear. And make no mistake, the people pushing these beliefs are deliberately targeting folks who are already feeling insecure or unsure about themselves for precisely that reason.
Take someone who knows that they’re smart, who isn’t socially experienced, probably has some anxiety around socializing and then give something that has the vague look and texture of science that says that their fears are legitimate. Because they know themselves to be smart, they’re going to trust that “science” says this and logic themselves into figuring out how it must work; on the off chance that they do check the sources, it’s going to be a cursory glance at best, if not just reading an AI summary. But they can now point to what is, for all intents and purposes, extruded science “product” and say “SEE? SEE!!”, because it justifies what they’re most afraid of. And people make poor choices when they’re afraid. They don’t like feeling afraid. It makes them angry. And it’s trivially easy for other people to direct that anger at a target… especially if that target is supposedly “responsible” for the thing that they’re afraid of.
(Notice how the bros who push this stuff are always complaining about women, not arguing to do something about the 10-20% of men who are ‘hoarding’ all the sex? Yeah, funny, that…)
Most of the rest comes from not even numbers but vibes. Half of what they’re selling is taking headlines about how “women are choosing to stop dating” or various “millennials/gen-z/gen-alpha men are having less sex” stories – which already are misunderstanding the data – and writing weird-ass fanfic about it, in order to market the vibes to you better.
But here the thing: your arguing with them isn’t really the point. Pushing back against them when it comes up is great, but most of the time, it’s going to be fruitless endeavour because they’re not operating in good faith. They’re spreading bullshit that they know to be bullshit or don’t care that’s bullshit, and they’ve been doing it for longer than you. You’re not going to change their minds because they have no incentive to; their incentive is to get you or your peers to buy what they’re selling.
The point is for you to stop listening to them. They’re lying and they’re not even lying well or believably, and they’re doing so to sell your own fears back to you. There’s no reason to give them the time of day or even trust their opinion on cheese, never mind listening to them about what women “want” or what men “have” to do to find love.
The reason why it hurts and upsets you is because you hear it over and over, and that has a way of settling in as being “true”. So the first step is to see if it’s even true in the first place, but the second step is to stop giving them any oxygen at all. Once you start cutting those voices out of your daily life and start going out and actually interacting with people in person, you’ll be amazed at how much better you feel and how much the real world doesn’t resemble the nightmare hellscape that the manosphere and incels want you to think it is.
Trust me, my guy: it’s not only not as bad as you think, you’re doing much better than you give yourself credit for.
You’ll be ok. I promise.
All will be well.
