DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: Thanks for all your work. I’ve learned a lot from your blog and what you’ve written in your blog.

I’ll begin by saying that I’ve noticed that there are a lot of crossovers between business and dating. To succeed in business, you need to be comfortable with rejection and taking risks. You need to be proactive, outgoing, and persistent. Like dating, it’s a numbers game.

I see a lot of dating advice that recommends increasing cold approaches, pursuing your own interests, and networking. Regarding cold approaches, many of those who work in sales do not rely on cold calling alone for good reason: approaching random people does not weigh the odds heavily in one’s favor. You really need to approach a lot of people to make up for the poor odds. I don’t rule out cold approaches entirely because I think they’re great for building confidence, but they aren’t a reliable way to get dates. Many people have already pointed this out. Pursuing your own interests and networking are self-explanatory. I am working on both of these. Unfortunately, my interests are kind of niche (classical and biblical scholarship, philosophy, history, fitness, RTS games, and self-help) and I don’t know where to go to find people that also like these things. I will admit that I am not great at finding groups, so any suggestions would be most welcome.

I will now speak of a less-commonly discussed business and dating crossover: marketing. One coach I’ve read compared online dating to digital marketing, which I thought was spot on. His advice makes a lot of sense: hire a professional photographer to take some great photos, post them to PhotoFeeler to receive anonymous feedback, and use the ones with the best ratings. If your profile isn’t getting any matches, change up your photos and revise your textual prompts – data over drama. 

To continue with the marketing analogy, a lot of businesses invest heavily in market research. They put a lot of effort into understanding where their potential customers are and what they are looking for. A business could be selling a great product but, if the right people don’t know about it, it won’t sell or at least won’t sell as well as it could. Marketing is instrumental in generating leads. Many salespeople rely on leads, which help put them in contact with people who at least have expressed some interest in what they are selling. Typically, leads are generated through marketing (both inbound and outbound) and networking. 

In dating, I can imagine networking functioning as a form of marketing as it “broadcasts” your reputation, but that’s a long-term solution rather than a short term one. Relationships and social networks take a lot of time to build. So, having said all this, are there ways to market/advertise yourself outside of dating apps? Additionally, what are the best ways to generate “leads” in dating? If I have a particular demographic of women in mind, what are some ways to appeal to them? On the other hand, is there a way to find a subset of women that would be really interested in dating me (an untapped market)? How might I find the women whose type I am? My goal is having lots of high-quality women who are interested in dating me. I have a good product: I’m handsome, very fit, disciplined, ambitious, financially responsible, successful, a good listener, genuine, and kind. I have things I’m working on, of course, but I still think I have a lot to offer. I also am OK on my own; I’m not looking to fill a hole in my life called girlfriend (I made that mistake before).

I’m eager to hear your thoughts!

Building Market Value

DEAR BUILDING MARKET VALUE: Well, this is awkward. I’ve talked about thinking about marketing in a dating context before and now I get to talk about how taking that too far is both limiting and missing the point. I’m sure my own petard wouldn’t hurt me…

Before I dig into this, I feel obligated to point out a couple of things, BMV. The first is that – like many other men who struggle with dating – the list of qualities you mention at the end of your letter aren’t qualities that are going to work to get you dates. Attraction isn’t passive, it’s active; you are working to attract someone, which means you have to be active in doing the attracting.

Second, the goal you state – having a lot of “high-quality” women interested in dating you – is where you’re going to stumble. While I’m always in favor of folks having the dating and social life they want, whether it’s long-term monogamy, kitchen-table polyamory, a series of short-term, low-commitment flings or even just a series of one-night stands, these only work when it’s about the people involved having a genuine connection… even if that connection is “ok, I think we have enough chemistry to make casual sex worth the risk.”

What you’re describing isn’t about dating, it’s about ego, and people are going to pick up on that very quickly. I hate to be the one to tell you this but people who are interested in dating are looking for someone who wants a relationship of some sort. What they’re not interested in is being a name on a list, having to compete like they’re auditioning for a role or serving as one option in a rotation of arm candy. And while there are women who are fine being decorative accessories, this is because this arrangement benefits them in some way beyond “you get to be seen with this guy!” which ain’t on offer here. So if you want to have better results, I would strongly suggest that you think about your motivations and interests and adjust things accordingly.  

Third: everything you list about your interests reads libertarian/right-wing under even a generous interpretation, and that’s also going to affect your prospects. I’m sure you’ve seen all the Discourse about how women are refusing to date right-wingers and MAGA types. This shouldn’t exactly be a surprise; you’re going to find very few people who are interested in dating someone who sees their personhood as an inconvenience and who actively or tacitly supports eliminating their rights and agency. So, y’know, that’s going to inform the supposed “untapped market” of who’s going to want to date you; it’s going to be limited to folks wanting to date someone right-wing or libertarian. Under the circumstances, that’s going to be a – to lean into the metaphor – small and highly competitive market, where demand is far outstripping supply.

Pair that with the goal of having your circle of women competing for you and I think you’re setting yourself up for a lot of disappointment.

Now with that out of the way, let’s get to the meat of your question.

As I said, I’ve written before about thinking in terms of marketing yourself, especially on dating apps. I still stand by this to a degree – it can be a handy guideline for how to craft your profile and how to avoid a lot of the common mistakes guys make. But there’s a difference between using something as a sort of writing prompt to spruce up your profile and some best practices to show yourself off to best effect and thinking that everything about one discipline transfers cleanly – or at all – into another.

One of the biggest issues when you taking thinking like this past “helpful way of thinking about things, but that’s it” is that you’re making the mistake of treating people – both the ‘product’ and the ‘leads’ – like abstract concepts instead of individuals, and this sort of thinking always leads to trouble. If you try to craft your product to fit a particular market, then what you’re ultimately doing is creating inauthenticity, which turns people off. Think of how people respond when corporate social media accounts start jumping on memes or joining the trend bandwagon. This is almost always seen as being the end of things, simply because now it’s no longer an organic creation of a particular community, being shared by folks who either are part of that community or who genuinely enjoy the creation. It’s become a cynical marketing ploy at best, inauthentic and even a little insulting in how pandering it feels. So, trying to craft the product to fit the niche runs a strong risk of creating the dating equivalent of “how do you do, fellow kids?”

And it’s very hard to create authenticity if you’re not already part of that niche. To use an example – and to fold a meme into the proceedings: everyone thinks they want a big titty goth girlfriend until she wants to do goth s--t. They’re interested in the aesthetics – the clothes, tattoos, the perceived deviancy and echoes of ‘exotic’ sexuality – but less so the person underneath. Folks love the corsets and dramatic makeup and hints of BDSM but are far less cool about, say, wanting to turn her spare bedroom into a Victorian conservatory full of pinned insects, vintage medical equipment, snake and bird skeletons, amateur taxidermy and dead things preserved in jars of formaldehyde.

It’s the same as the supposed Manic Pixie Dream Girl fetish – dudes want to date someone who they think will make them a “better” person, with bonus blow-jobs. They don’t want the reality of dating someone who’s varying flavors of neurodivergent and whose quirks and adorable foibles become less adorable when they’re not in service of that dude’s self-improvement. The relationship they imagine is one that’s entirely in service to them, not about a relationship with that person specifically, with both the benefits and drawbacks that come with any relationship. It’s the “good parts” version, the one that doesn’t come with inconveniences or frustrations or days when s--t’s going badly because they’re out of spoons and struggling to get their Adderall prescription filled.

Just as importantly, if you’re focusing on a particular ‘market’ or demographic, you’re also focusing far more on what you think you want, instead of who you’re actually compatible with. I watched this happen frequently in the pick-up scene with dudes who wanted to date strippers. They wanted the clout of dating someone who was seen as being both desired but also “difficult” to attain. They were almost never ready to deal with the reality of dating someone who lived a dancer’s lifestyle – from the hours, to the personality types, to dealing their own feelings about watching other dudes try to grope their partner while she gives them a lap dance.

On the personal level, I tried to be the club guy for a long time before realizing that I’d spent a lot of time and money on things I didn’t like, pursuing people who didn’t match well with me but would’ve made my bros jealous. As I’ve said before: I was a lot happier and way the f--k healthier once I stopped and started leaning into who I was, rather than who I thought I was “supposed” to be – that is, trying to fit into the target market, instead of realizing that the two simply didn’t have enough overlap.

So rather than doing “market research”, it works far better to know yourself and the sort of person you would be most compatible with – not just in terms of surface issues like hobbies, but their ambitions, values, long-term plans and goals and overall lifestyle. You don’t want to be looking for “untapped” markets or “people who might be interested in dating you”, in no small part because that doesn’t mean that you will be interested in dating them. And unless you’re just looking for ego-fluffing and arm-candy, that’s just wasting their time as much as yours.

Focus on knowing what you want and who you would be compatible with and use that information to find the places where they’re most likely to be. Not only will that be a more efficient use of your time and energy, it’ll also mean you are more likely to actually enjoy yourself while you’re out trying to meet people. That makes everything else easier – after all, it takes far less effort to do things you enjoy and it means that other people are more likely to enjoy your company.

The next thing to understand is that the market analogy starts falling apart pretty quickly when you’re dealing with individuals… and you are dealing with individuals. You can’t date demographics or market share. You’re dating people, and people are complex, messy and defy easy categorization. Everyone, even folks who share most of the same culture and interests, are going to have individual tastes and desires and circumstances, which is how you end up with a hell of a lot of “hear me out…” over various people one wouldn’t think of as objects of desire. Brad Pitt may be the ur-example of someone held up as peak hotness, but you’re still going to find metric f--ktons of women who wouldn’t bang him with a borrowed vagina and Michael B. Jordan to do the pushing. Meanwhile, many of those same women will talk about all the depraved things they would let Matt Berry do to them.

The last thing is that “marketing” in the dating sense is down to word of mouth (i.e. networks) and personal “sales” (i.e. talking with people). Folks have tried the broadcast advertisement ideas before; personal ads have been a thing since the invention of newspapers, figures like Romeo Rose and others have put up websites and billboards advertising themselves and influencers and online personalities like Aella have tried to parley niche fame (or infamy) in an attempt to crowdsource finding a relationship – often with offers with cash rewards. These are all incredibly inefficient at best, when they’ve “worked” at all.

The fact of the matter is that the closest anyone has ever come to “marketing” someone to the dating market that wasn’t either through personal recommendations or interacting with people directly involved things like movie studios playing up stars’ bachelorhood or the media writing breathless gossip fodder about whether someone would finally “land” some celebrity. But this wasn’t marketing for the celebrity’s benefit, it was to sell tickets or newspapers. They were the ad, not the product. So unless your marketing plan involves “become famous”, even in low-grade, specific-niche fame (well known on the NY party circuit, etc.) you’re really not going to find a way to make it work for you.

So you’re basically looking at “people talking you up to their friends” or, y’know, going out and meeting people yourself. And in both of those cases, success is going to be contingent on how you make people feel. It’s great that you’re successful… now go tell someone your take-home salary and see if she wants to go on a date with you. Then try making someone laugh or feel special or just enjoy her time with you, instead.

This is why I keep hammering the “the traits you’re focused on aren’t the traits that are going to help you”. Even if we step past the “these are things men care about” aspect, the fact of the matter is that some of the traits are the sort of thing that only come up over time, in the course of a relationship, not “here’re my selling points”, and many of them are ones that can only be demonstrated, not told. Lots of folks talk about being a good listener; very few of them actually listen.

Similarly, people mistake attention for attraction; it’s like when people focus too much on maximizing matches on dating apps instead of focusing on connecting with people. Peacocking in its various forms (including being conventionally attractive) can get attention, sure, but getting attention isn’t the same as keeping it or turning that attention into attraction.

Folks aren’t going to tell their single friends to hit you up or offer to set them up with you on looks or salary. They’re going to do so because they think you’re a good guy who’s a good match for their friend. And they’re not going to do that unless you’ve shown them that you’re a good guy. Similarly, a dude who’s classically handsome but rude or off-putting may get initial attention from someone at the bar or club, but their behavior will kill any attraction their looks might have helped with. Meanwhile, the sex-gettingest men I’ve known have had a wide variety of builds, facial features and jobs… but they’ve been great at making women laugh and having a good time with them. They lived interesting lives, had lots of things to talk about but also genuinely liked and were interested in people – not just women but people. That was their “marketing” – interacting with folks and those people having a good time with them. Everything else – whether it was a friend saying “hey, you should meet my friend Bert” or getting someone’s number at a party – came from there.

All of which is to say: relationships aren’t about capitalism or an exchange of goods and haven’t been since we stopped arranging marriages between members of the aristocracy. While thinking in terms of marketing can be a helpful way of highlighting some best practices and avoiding pitfalls in specific contexts, expanding it further isn’t helpful. Focus less on markets and more on learning how to connect with people and how to make them feel good with you. That’ll work far better than trying to find underserved customers or raising market value. You’re dating a person, not figures on a balance sheet. 

Good luck.

Please send your questions to Dr. NerdLove at his website (www.doctornerdlove.com/contact); or to his email, doc@doctornerdlove.com

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: The idea of settling gets thrown around a lot but people often argue over what it actually means. Some say it’s holding out for your perfect partner and breaking up with a “good enough” partner. Others say it’s having a relationship you are unhappy with because you think there’s nothing better out there for you. Others still say it’s just making compromises and understanding how many of your needs are going to be met by a partner. 70%? 80? And that number depends on the person.

What do you think? What does it mean to settle in anno domini 2025?

Sincerely,

The Unsettler

DEAR THE UNSETTLER: Quick question: who’s actually saying these things and why in pluperfect f--kery are you listening to them in the first place? Most of what you’re describing as people’s ideas of what “settling” means sounds like someone’s experience-free theorizing, engagement-baiting TikTokers or people who’re trying to convince other people to join them in the crab bucket. Frankly, I wouldn’t take these with a grain of salt, I’d be throwing that salt at them, to repel them like the slaadi they are.   

Settling is very simple: it’s a matter of determining what you must have in a relationship, what you will absolutely not accept in one and what you’re willing to forgo. Everything else is window dressing.

And to be clear: everyone settles; there is no settling down without settling for. Nobody alive – no celebrity, no influencer, nobody – gets 100% of what they want in a relationship, simply because there are no “perfect” matches, any more than there are perfect people. Nobody can be everything you want and give you all the things you desire in a relationship, because they are human. They will always have quirks and flaws and their own personalities, desires and agency, which means that their desires and goals won’t always mesh perfectly with yours. Even when things seem to line up on paper, the execution can be radically different; pick three RPG-loving nerds, you’re gonna get four opinions on tabletop systems and probably at least two bonus ones on CRPG vs. TTRPG vs. MMORPG and one person complaining about LitRPG just because, and nobody is even sure how they got in the room.

The only people who can give you 100% of what you want are imaginary, and even then, you’re settling because they aren’t real. Even an AI “girlfriend” is settling – both because they’re not actual people but also because they can be changed or taken from you at any time, simply because the company decides they don’t want to bother supporting it any longer.

So, settling comes down to understanding yourself and what your priorities are and what you’re willing to not have in exchange for those priorities. You can hold out for “perfect”, if you really want to – nobody’s stopping you, after all – but this means waiting for a long, long time. ��But this is why I think focusing on “settling” is a mistake; it carries the connotation of “giving up”, or the idea that you’re quitting or conceding when you could, even should hold out. That’s not a good way to look at a potential relationship; framing it this way puts more emphasis on the supposed lack, which is a great way to prime yourself to be frustrated and disappointed instead of happy and fulfilled.

Instead, I think “compromise” may be a better mental framing; after all, your partner isn’t getting 100% of what they want either. But with a compromise, you’re putting the focus on what you do get and how this maximizes the benefits to both of you. It puts the emphasis on the wonderful things your partner brings to the table, the things that make you happy and your life better because they’re part of it and vice versa. Yes, there’re things you’re both giving up… but that’s the point of a compromise. You’re focusing on the collaborative aspect, the what you bring together and what you can build together with them, rather than on what you don’t get. And when you do it right, it means that while you may not get some things – even things you really would like to have – what you do get is so great that you don’t mind not getting the rest in exchange.

Good luck.

Please send your questions to Dr. NerdLove at his website (www.doctornerdlove.com/contact); or to his email, doc@doctornerdlove.com

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’m in my late 20’s and I’m fed up with dating. I feel like I’m trying to knock down a wall by hitting it with my head over and over again. The only viable option for dating seems to be apps now that I’m out of college. I have tried pretty much every popular dating app. Initially I got the most matches on Hinge but none of those lead to anything long term. Each of them averaged about 3 dates and then just kind of fizzled out. These days I get NO matches on dating apps. The app I probably had the most success with was Bumble. Using Bumble led to my first and only long-term relationship so far and it also lead to me making a new friendship. So, my experiences haven’t been a total loss. However, those were the only two matches I ever got on that app over a period of about two years.

In the meantime, my peers have all seemingly met their soul mates and are all either having kids or starting to think about having kids. For most people I know, the person they are married to was only the second person they ever dated. In fact, I know at least one couple that has been together since middle school.

I’ve been ok with being single since I made the choice to end my last relationship, and to be clear I don’t regret that decision. Following the conclusion of that relationship I’ve focused on improving my mental health and practicing self-care. While my life still isn’t perfect, I’m MUCH better off than I was 3 years ago.

However, as I’m getting older and my friends become less available to hang out, I’m starting to realize I’m lonely. That, combined with the specter of turning 30, is making me think about how to find a serious relationship again. I’ve read your old post about how you should “get off the dating apps” but I can’t seem to find viable alternatives. I’ve looked on places like meetup.com for inspiration and either events cost money, or they conflict with my work hours or the ones that seem to be interesting are all being attended by people who are in their 60’s. Honestly, I’m f--king frustrated and in my opinion the problem seems to be systemic. It’s the result of factors like the increasing power of tech companies, and the ever-growing cost of living. My folks haven’t been able to help me out. They remember back in their days when you would see someone attractive, flirt a bit and then ask them out on a date. That’s not how it works anymore. If anything, that approach feels like a social taboo. My mom has said she doesn’t understand my generation at all and I have told her that I don’t either.

If I’m doing something wrong or there is a resource available, I haven’t considered then please let me know. If I’m right and the problem is systemic, then is there anything I can do to improve my odds beyond advocating for long term political and social reform?

-Sincerely, Super Exhausted

DEAR SUPER EXHAUSTED: OK, I am going to tell you something that you’re not going to want to hear:

Your parents were right.

“See someone you find attractive, talk to them, flirt, ask on a date” is how you still meet people, even in the far-flung future of 2025 AD. That hasn’t changed. The only thing that has changed is where it’s all happening, not how.  

Here’s the thing that people keep getting wrong about dating apps: they’re nothing more than glorified introduction services. They are, for all intents and purposes, a singles bar in your pocket. They put you in the same metaphorical room with other people who are also interested in dating and meeting people and… well, the rest is ultimately up to you. Everything else – the match percentages, the algorithms, the boosts, flowers and so on – are sales pitches and attempts to increase the perceived value of the apps. You could try to skip the walled garden aspect and instead try something akin to an r4r subreddit for your city, where you may have no algorithm to fight against but still have to deal with upvotes and downvotes… but that’s functionally just the personals – proving once again that there is nothing new under the sun. ��But at the end of the day, the process is exactly the same as seeing someone on the street, in a bar or in class: you go over, you introduce yourself, make small talk, see if they’re receptive, maybe flirt a little if the conversation is going well and then ask someone on a date.

This is what trips people up; the apps aren’t magical, they’re just convenient. The only thing that’s fundamentally different from meeting someone in person is that you’re capable of “approaching” (i.e. swiping right, pinging, liking, etc.) far more people at a time than you could in person. You can’t carry on, say, four separate conversations while also saying “hello” to another ten people at a bar or hanging out at a mixer; you can on a dating app. But otherwise, the skills you need are functionally the same.

Now, this exchange comes with obvious trade-offs. For one, the apps have a vested interest in getting the customer to convert, and so they do things like paywall the people who you might most want to talk to. There’s also the fact that, as one person put it, you can’t photograph a personality; some people’s appeal doesn’t come across in still images, but in how they move and talk and behave. You can get hints of personality in the profile and in the photo choices, but it’s still next to impossible to get a full picture of who someone is and what they’re like until you meet them in person.

You also run into the issue that there’s a difference between someone who’s attractive and someone who’s good at creating a dating profile. Being good at being photographed, picking the right photos and knowing how to write a good profile are all specialized skills that don’t necessarily translate to being attractive or unattractive in person. It’s very similar to how a person could be an incredible songwriter but couldn’t carry a tune with both hands and a bucket and vice versa.

In fact, to take that further, there’s also the fact that there’re a host of signals and signs that affect whether you’re attracted to someone or not that you simply can’t detect without being in the same physical space as them. No dating app can convey the way they smell or the sound of their laugh when they’re delighted. You don’t see how they treat the waitstaff or how their eyes sparkle when they tell a joke. You don’t know how warm or stand-offish they may be in person or how their voice sounds to you or any of the other little hints and tells and body language and pheromones that affect attraction and connection. So, as a result: you get a lot of false positives – dates that don’t necessarily go anywhere or that fizzle out.

There’s also the fact that you’re exposing yourself to more rejection, precisely because you can carry on more conversations and approach more people; it’s nothing to do with the apps or people’s expectations or standards, and everything to do with math.

And yes, the swipe mechanic and reduced space for profiles does encourage shallower or less thoughtful connections; it’s in the app’s benefit to keep you mindlessly swiping until you get frustrated, and then to sell you tools that will supposedly alleviate that frustration. And if you happen to be someone who is popular on the apps, it’s very easy to get overwhelmed by people who flood every profile with low �– or no-effort messages. As I’ve said before, the average first message from men on dating apps is around twelve to twenty-four characters. Not words: individual characters, including spaces and punctuation.

And now in the age of LLM plagiarism machines being widely available, even longer messages are zero effort and zero consideration as folks try to outsource their personality to chatbots with delusions of grandeur.

But like I said: this is why “how dating has changed” is more of an illusion than reality. The process and the skillset of “see someone, talk to them, ask them out” is the same. The problem is how little people actually try to cultivate those skills or to put them into active use. Because that’s the other part of the issue: if you want to get better at using those skills, you have to actually use them. And a lot of people’s dating struggles tend to revolve around all the ways they’re trying to avoid having to use them in the first place.

It doesn’t matter if you’re in a – pardon the phrase – “target rich environment”, whether in person or online, if you aren’t going to actually go and talk to people, or if you haven’t worked on the skills necessary to actually make that connection. You still use those skills you’re going to struggle on the apps too – including if you get to the stage of actually meeting up in person, which is the part that folks often tend to forget in favor of maximizing matches.

And if you’re not practicing those skills in real life, they’re not going to improve. Which is part of why the process of getting better results on the apps is the same as getting better results meeting people in person: you use the skills. Otherwise, there will be no improvement.

And it’s not that hard to improve the skills; you talk to people, you do your best to get to know them, develop rapport and generally connect with them as a person. And that means that you have to be comfortable talking to strangers… otherwise they won’t stop being strangers. And that includes making new friends, not just finding potential lovers – something that should be of interest to you, since, as you’ve noted, you’re feeling lonely and it’s harder to meet up with your friends.

The reason why “approaching” has become a social taboo – it hasn’t, but that’s not the point – isn’t that people are turned off by it, it’s that people are assholes about it. Women, f’rex, aren’t inherently against meeting someone at the grocery store, the park, or at a MeetUp, it’s that much of their day is full of folks who see “existing in public” as a sign that those women exist for those guys’ consumption. A guy who has decent social skills, who reads the room and picks an appropriate moment to say “hey” is very different from a guy who tries to bulldoze their way into a conversation and sees her as an NPC in his game of life.

It’s very much the equivalent of having to deal with all the folks with clipboards or mixtapes demanding your time and attention and not taking “no thank you” or silence as an answer. If that was a significant portion of your daily existence, you would be on guard and far less interested in talking to strangers. Doubly so if half the time you were either trying to run errands and go home or had just had a lousy day and weren’t in the mood to talk to anyone.

This – incidentally – is also why picking your moments and being willing to take a pass is part of the skillset. Yeah, that sexy somebody in the produce aisle may fit the mold of “I don’t know anything about you, but you’re everything I’m dreaming of”, but the level of not just skill but effort to shift the mood of someone who’s had a s--t day or is exhausted and simply wants to get some zucchini to go with dinner and get home can be Herculean. Knowing how and when to pick your metaphorical battles is part and parcel of social calibration.

But all of this is to say that the in-person and online struggles tend to be the same; the only difference is that folks think that the apps are going to bypass all of the things that make them hesitate and make a connection happen where it wouldn’t otherwise. The apps feel lower risk because you aren’t trying to start the conversation in person, but as we’ve established, that doesn’t translate into better results.

If you aren’t good at the in-person side of things, you’re not going to do that much better on the apps. You still have to be able to engage a person, connect with them and get to the point where you and they want to go out and do something together.

The last thing I will say is that while developing the skill set is the most important part… you are also going to decide what level of friction, discomfort or sacrifice you’re willing to deal with and how you’re going to deal with it. Yeah, some of the meetups cost money; so do many singles mixers, speed-dating events or continuing education classes. And so – for that matter – do dating apps, with the subscription tiers, pay-to-play boosts and so on. You have to decide whether you’re willing to blow $15 on a door fee or to pay $25 a month (minimum) to Match Group.

Similarly, the friction may entail looking a little further afield – choosing to join a run club or an amateur pickleball league to meet new people with similar interests, rather than an event or meetup designated specifically for dating. This is, again, where the skills come in – including knowing when to shoot your shot and when to hold back. You don’t want to be the horny guy in the yoga class, but there’s a difference between him and the regular who makes small talk before or afterwards and gets to know people… and every once in a while, will ask someone out on a date when there’re some sparks.

So, while my general advice to you is to seek out group events or hobbyist groups – like the aforementioned run clubs and so on – that line up with your passions and interests, it’s going to be more important to spend time in those groups working on being a more socially skilled person, rather than looking for dates. This will take you a lot further, especially in the long-run, and you’ll make new friends and build new social circles that will help with the loneliness at the same time. And that will give you more opportunities to find someone who’d be a good match for you. After all, your special someone may end up being someone who you might never have seen or swiped on if you saw them on Hinge.

Good luck.

Please send your questions to Dr. NerdLove at his website (www.doctornerdlove.com/contact); or to his email, doc@doctornerdlove.com