DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I have been attending martial arts classes for a couple months now – and I have a huge crush on the instructor. He’s funny, kind, patient, talented, and very handsome.

Here’s the problem – I don’t know if he’s into me (I did ask him jokingly if he’s sick of my face already a couple times but the most I’ve gotten as a response is a chuckle). I don’t know if he’s attached (my friend who has been at the studio longer says she thinks he isn’t because one of the member’s mum was telling him to get a girlfriend). Hell, I don’t know if he’s even straight (I uhm, kinda stalked his Facebook page and both he and someone else had referred to himself as gay jokingly, though maybe the joke is referencing his actual orientation?)!

I want to ask him out, but I’m scared he’ll reject me and then I can’t ever attend his classes again, which would suck because crush aside, his classes are genuinely the most fun of all the others I’ve ever attended and I don’t want to lose that.

There is also the fact that he’s never alone – even after the class ends other students are always hanging around, so it’s kind of impossible to ask him out without outing myself out to everybody.

My friend suggested I could subtly make a reference to him having a girlfriend/wife (like asking if his girlfriend/wife cooks) but I feel like that is very obvious.

Therefore, I’m wondering if there’s any way to ask him out/ show my interest in a way that gives me plausible deniability in case he’s not interested?

Thanks and regards,

Hopelessly Crushing

DEAR HOPELESSLY CRUSHING: OK, I’m going to tell you right now HC: I can all but guarantee this is a one-sided crush. Students get crushes on teachers since the days of Heloise and Abelard; it’s a tale literally older than steam. But 99.999% of the time, the student’s crush is just that: the student’s. And of the remaining .001% when it’s reciprocated… well, frankly, most of the time that usually ends up being a bad idea, for a lot of reasons.

I do wish you told me how old you are, because good God you sound incredibly young, and with that in mind I will give you this advice that will serve you well in the future: f--k plausible deniability, f--k subtlety and f--k trying to scope things out without actually taking responsibility for how you feel. All trying to ask someone out without actually asking them out for fear that you’ll get rejected does is create the awkwardness you’re desperately trying to avoid.

I promise you: the attempts at being subtle aren’t nearly as subtle as you think, and trying to play little subterfuges to feel things out gives the game away in ways that are far more embarrassing than if you just said “hey, I think you’re cute, would you like to get dinner?” Even trying to scope things out before you make your move isn’t going to help – asking someone out on a date is the best way to find out if they’re a) available (which is different than being single) and b) if they are interested in going on a date with you.

Just as importantly, though, is to recognize that momentary awkwardness is just that: momentary. The awkwardness of admitting to a crush only to be told “I’m flattered but…” is only uncomfortable for a moment. It’s how you respond to that “thank you but no” that determines not just how awkward things are but how long that awkwardness lasts. If you can take that “no” with grace, then the only awkwardness that will remain will be if you make it awkward.

If you can power through the momentary embarrassment – and it is only momentary – and let the matter drop before going back to being student and teacher, then there’s nothing more to it. You might blush or cringe a little at the next class or two, but there’s no reason why you would need to quit going to the class or seek out a different instructor. But if you treat it like some sort of world-shattering, dignity-erasing event… well, that’s what you’re going to get.

Trust me when I tell you: learning how to grit your teeth and power through the awkwardness is a life skill that will pay dividends over your lifetime. And even a simple acknowledging the awkward – literally saying “well this is awkward…” – kills the awkwardness. The awkward thrives whenever people try to ignore it; calling it out and addressing it makes it go away.

But like I said: I think this is just a one-sided crush and you’re making far more about it than it can be. I think your better option is just to let this one fade, like all crushes do if you just leave them alone.

In the future, however, don’t play silly games to try to figure out how to avoid the temporary embarrassment of being rejected; they don’t work and often only make things worse. You do far better to be up front with your interest and to say what you want than to hint and hope and imply and to try to read the tea leaves.

Love is a full-contact sport; there’s no way to play without the risk of getting hurt, but trying to only play half-way is a good way to ensure it.

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 first romantic relationship. I knew going in that it was statistically unlikely to work out, so I tried not to get my hopes up, but I’m still crushed. My partner and I have had a couple discussions over the past few months that essentially amounted to “we want lives in different directions and neither of us are gonna change our minds, but we’re still in love so let’s enjoy this while it lasts.” He’s one of the kindest, gentlest, most thoughtful people I know, and even though we’ve only been dating for a little less than a year, I’d consider him my best friend. I’ve never loved anyone like this before. Losing him is going to hurt so much. It already hurts so much.

There’s a part of me that thinks I could make it work, but not without a lot of sacrifice and difficulty on my part. I think parenting could theoretically be rewarding and I could be decent at it, but it’s a lot of work I’d really, really prefer not to do unless I absolutely had to. However, keeping a (beloved!) college boyfriend is obviously not a good reason to agree to have kids I don’t want. It’s just that the possibility that I could somehow make this work makes it so much harder to leave.

I know I should be breaking up with him and trying to meet new people before it gets a lot harder to do that in the working world. It’s just so hard. I love him, he loves me, we deeply enjoy each other’s company, we have tons of mutual friends, we’ve met each other’s families, and on and on. I’ve never felt so safe or seen with someone before, and I don’t want to give that up. But I know I’ve got to.

Hesitantly, I’ve mentally given us the deadline of the end of the school year, but we haven’t actually had a conversation about timeline yet. I’ve told a few of my friends about the situation because a) nice to have emotional support but also b) if I didn’t tell anyone for external pressure there’s a chance that I’d claw my way into staying as long as possible until we break up on bad/resentful terms, and I don’t want to do that. I honestly think we could be friends after we end it, and I want to, though I don’t know how I’ll get from being so desperately in love with him to loving him platonically. The thought of him being with someone else and them building a life together tears me to pieces.

Also, he’s got a very scant support network and a lot of mental health stuff going on, so that’s another worry of mine.

I’m sorry this letter is so all over the place. There’s a lot of advice on the internet for dating with a time limit, for where you both know the end is inevitable, but those situations aren’t quite the same as mine and I feel lost. I guess what I’m asking is, how do I initiate those difficult timeline conversations? How do I start to let go? Will it ever stop hurting?

Time To Say Goodbye

DEAR TIME TO SAY GOODBYE: This is a heartbreaking situation to be in, TTSG, and you have my sympathies. One of the most frustrating – but sometimes inevitable – relationships to be in is one where you know that you and your partner love each other to pieces, but you also know that this relationship is only just for now, and no amount of wishing or hoping or talking it out is going to change things. Sometimes there are issues that are just too fundamental, too deeply embedded to be overcome, no matter how much the two of you wish that you could.

Now, I’m going to give you some advice that you’re not going to like; in fact, it’s going to sound kind of callous, considering how you’re feeling and what you’ve said. Just trust me when I am telling you this as someone who’s been there and done that and had his heart broken more than a few times.

The first thing is going to be true, but you’re still going to feel like I’m not taking you seriously: this too, shall pass.

The pain you feel right now hurts. It absolutely does. It’s your first love, your first serious relationship and you already see the ending coming. The way you feel now is how epic, tragic love songs sound. Even if, intellectually, you know you’re not the first people to fall in love, it still feels like the fact that this relationship isn’t going to last is a crime against all that is holy.

There’s that part of you that rages against the inevitability of it. There’s the part of you that is still holding out hope, beyond the scope of reason, that things could change and you’re still hoping for a miracle. There’s even that weird part of you that feels like maybe you should just accept this and end things now, just to get the pain over with instead of watching it come for you like the world’s slowest shark. All of these parts are colliding within you, and every time they do, it’s like a hammer blow to the chest. You’re feeling the complexity and crazy-making shape and substance of grief, and it feels like if you give into it, the tears will never stop.

But they will. As horrible as it feels, as much as it hurts more than anything you may have experienced up until now, it will fade. The tears will stop flowing. The pain will lessen – first so minutely that you barely even feel it and then, sooner than you expect, you will look up and realize that you haven’t felt this pain in a while and you will be surprised to realize it only by its absence. This pain, this sadness, this regret, as much as it seems so huge that it would swallow the world will not be with you.

This too, shall pass. What hurts now will eventually become nostalgia, a memory of the joys and pain of young love that you look back on with fondness and possibly even a little ruefulness. You’ll look back at this moment and chuckle, because your future self will have gained experience the distance you will have from this moment will give you perspective to see it differently than how it feels to you now. It feels impossible as you read these words, but this day is coming, as inevitable as a sunrise follows the moon.

It’s not that time heals all wounds, so much as that time has a way of broadening our understanding. Time only moves in one direction, after all, and with time and distance comes understanding and wisdom. In time you will realize that the pain you feel hurts so much only because it’s so new and so different. In time, you will realize that it’s not as bad as it feels now and that what you’re experiencing is as much novelty as it is pain. Not novelty in the sense that it’s an amusement, but in the sense that you have never felt something like this before and you have nothing to compare it to, and when we’re young and in love, everything is louder than everything else. Everything is heightened; everything is turned up to 11. The highs feel the highest they’ve ever been and the lows feel abyssal.

In time, there will be other loves, after this love becomes a fond memory. In time, there will be other losses, after this loss has been tinted by the gold light of the past. In time, this won’t be so bad.

And I’m going to be honest here: there’s a part of your letter that caught my eye immediately, that suggests to me that this will come sooner than later. You’ve only been dating for several months now – not even a year – but you’ve already had discussions about how this relationship has a hard limit. It sounds like you’re still hard up against what’s known as the New Relationship Energy – when the newness of this relationship is causing your body to shoot fireworks of dopamine and oxytocin straight to the pleasure centers of your brain. It’s a heady time; you are, quite literally, getting high off being in each others’ presence.

It’s also a time of deception, when you’re so lovestruck by one another that a lot of sins and complaints get ignored simply because you’re just that stoned on one another. It’s easy to get lost in how you feel for your partner because… well, because love isn’t just an emotion, it’s also chemistry. It’s the chemicals in your brain saying “get closer, spend time, have sex, bond together” at the top of their voice and drown out everything else. It feels like how we expect love to feel, based on all the poems and songs and stories and movies… but it’s not. It’s excitement, it’s energy, it’s passion, it’s an inability to keep your hands off one another… but it’s not what love feels like, not all the time. A lot of people confuse it for love, and then get incredibly concerned when it fades – as it always does. That initial rush of passion and intensity drops away and what’s left is where you start building love.

Which is a long way of saying: as intense as things feel right now, I promise you: this too, shall pass. And in this case, this is part of what makes it feel so heartbreaking to have things end so soon after they started. Yes, that’s always a sad thing… but I promise you, that this isn’t how it would feel the entire time you’re together if this relationship could go the distance. It feels worse, simply because you’re expecting to get off the roller coaster, right at the start when you get that first drop and first loop.

Does that make things easier now? No. But in time, you’ll understand it a little better, and that will add to the perspective of it all.

But what do you do in the immediate future? How do you handle loving this person but not being able to be with them and not wanting them to leave your life?

Well, for one thing, I think you should agree – even if it’s only in your head �– that there’s an end date. The end of the school year feels right; it’s a time of transition, with the long summer before classes resume. It makes for a natural and organic end point, with time apart to allow your heart to heal.

It doesn’t necessarily need to be the end of this school year; you could continue until the next year, or even until graduation. There’s not a serious reason why this can’t be until then – another natural transition point, another curtain marking the end of this act of your life – beside the worry that it’ll be that much harder to end things then. That’s a call that you and your beau will have to make.

But I think, regardless of when you have that ending marked down, that you should do your best to live your life as though you were ignorant of it. The last thing you want is to spend all this time living in the anticipation of loss or the end. Endings come to us all the time – loving someone, whether they’re a person or a pet, is an invitation to an inevitable tragedy. If we spend our time dwelling on the ending in the future, we rob ourselves of the joy of the present. The last thing you want is to look back on your relationship and regret how much time you spent thinking about how sad the ending is going to be instead of living in the now and enjoying that love. It can feel a little delusional, sure – how are you supposed to ignore the Sword of Damocles hanging over your head? How are you supposed to be happy when the happiness comes to an end? – but it’s a matter of whether you want to feel joy and companionship, or mourn a loss that hasn’t even happened yet. Loving like the end will never come is better than sitting, waiting for that slow shark until you reach the point where you’re rooting for the shark to hurry up and arrive already.

And you will continue to love him, even after this ends. The love will be different, sure, because there are many kinds of love. Eros may be coming to an end at some point in the future, but philia – the love of friends – and storge –the affection for family, including family in all but blood – remain.

It is, however, hard to make that transition when you’re in the thick of it. You’re going to have too much muscle memory and too many automatic reactions and expectations to move from lovers to friends, so soon after this aspect of your relationship ends. You’re going to need time apart – to heal, to recover and to not re-open the wound, yes, but also to unlearn those old ingrained responses and to remember who you are when you’re just you, not one part of a couple.

As much as it hurts to think of, and as much as it will feel like you’ve lost a piece of yourself, you will need to separate. You’ll have to live as just yourself, relearn how it feels, discover who you are now that you have these new feelings and new emotions and new information about yourself. That can’t happen if you keep trying to force the transition while also having to resist the reflexive behaviors and actions you’ve built together. At best, you end up delaying the inevitable and making the second parting that much worse. At worst… well, all that happens is that you never allow the wounds to fully close.

But if you and he are so in tune with one another, if you two are so sympatico, so drift-compatible that you can’t imagine a life without one another? Well, those fundamental aspects of your relationship won’t change. There will be new texture and nuance and some things that you’ll not do again with them… but the core of who they are and what made you care for each other will still be there. If you could be friends before, and you hold onto the respect and affection you have for one another… there’s no reason you can’t be friends again after.��It will just take time, and you’ll have to be willing to take that time. As tempting as it will be to declare that you’re over it and ready, you won’t be. Like Luke, you’ll be rushing off before you’re prepared and you’ll end up setting that future further back than if you had just waited. This is why the end of the school year provides such a convenient end date; the summer gives you time apart and away to allow for the healing to begin.

During that time, you’re going to want to lean on the support of your friends. Take a couple weeks to mourn, but then return to life. Part of the pain of a break up is that you go through withdrawal; you were taking oxytocin and dopamine and now you’ve been cut off by your dealer. Finding other sources helps ease the pain – laughter and good conversation with friends, touch and hugs and cuddling with your crew, time doing things that have meaning and bring you satisfaction all will help bring you back to life.

The last thing I will tell you that will be cold comfort now but will make sense later: what you learn now will go on to make your next relationship – and break up – that much easier and that much more successful. This isn’t the end. This isn’t even the beginning of the end. This is merely the end of the beginning.

I know it hurts, TTSG, but I promise you: you’ll be ok.

All will be well.

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’ve been reading advice after advice, letter after letter. And your advice boils down to “tough it up”. I have autism and none of this has been helpful.

Your confidence article in particular read utterly backwards to me. How the hell is confidence based on imaginary self-ego boosting nothing but arrogant bull? When I see people doing that around me, I go out of my way to remind them of *objective reality*. Subjective human thought can NEVER be more important than objective reality. Being happy or confident without objective reason to be is just self-delusion. An ostrich with its head in the sand. People don’t DESERVE to feel good unless they have objective value, which 99.9% of people *don’t*. Including me, sadly…

If human opinion could grant value, MY opinions would have value. But they clearly freaking don’t, so what I’m I supposed to conclude? That something’s wrong with JUST ME?

The subject point is that like… why do I have to jump through all these hoops just to be happy. I’ve read the lines to “learn to be happy single” etc etc, and its all bull. How can I be happy when nobody likes me but me? And being likeable is impossible. I can’t read people, and I can’t STAND unfounded opinions, which is apparently some kind of cardinal social sin. God forbid people should be informed before opening their mouths? This idea that every stupid thought that comes to every idiot’s head is equal to Einstein is sickening.

And before you go “oh there’s your problem”, I spent an entire year talking with actually very smart ladies whose opinions I greatly respected at like a dozen convention after-parties. Did all the advice. Focused on just talking to them as people. Didn’t bulldoze the “date me” stuff. Listened to their opinions (since they turned out to be worthwhile, and no I didn’t say anything of the sort like “finally a SMART person”, I’m not stupid). Just tried to be friendly.

STILL nothing. So I don’t know. I did all the stupid hoops ANYWAY, DESPITE thinking they’re stupid, for a whole year. Nothing. If a YEAR isn’t enough, I don’t freaking know how the human race is intact.

I’m sorry for being heated at any point… I just… am so freaking tired of putting in all this effort (being social is HARD as an autistic person) for nothing…

The Only Sane Man

DEAR THE ONLY SANE MAN: I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase “be kind, everyone is fighting a battle you know nothing about”, OSM. Well, I think your letter provides a new twist on it: some people are fighting battles they absolutely don’t need to be fighting. Like, at all.

I mean, you come out swinging from jump street with an astounding misinterpretation of the advice I give. First, the phrase you’re looking for is “toughen up”, and second, that’s not even close to what any of it says, including the articles about confidence. So right off the bat, you’re coming in with unnecessary and unneeded aggression while also being incredibly wrong about it.

And hey… there’s your problem.

Now, I know that replies where I bring out The Chair Leg of Truth are popular; they’re entertaining to read and they’re easy to write. But I didn’t pick your letter because I just wanted a letter full of softballs and low and slow pitches to swing at, and I’m going to try to be as gentle as is reasonably possible considering what you’ve given me to work with. But you may as well sit back and get ready for your introduction to the Chair Leg, because it is wise and terrible and it does not lie.

I’ll be honest OSM, I think the reason why you’re so tired from trying to be social has less to do with your being autistic and everything to do with the fact that you’re carrying around a chip on your shoulder that’s so large and so dense that it’s collapsed into a singularity and it’s currently sucking your brain out through your ear. To be perfectly blunt, your letter and the way you describe yourself makes it sound like you go out of your way to be as unpleasant a person to be around as is humanly possible. I’m entirely unsurprised that your efforts are going for naught because, even using the most generous possible interpretation of what you’re saying, your entire demeanor is alternating between the most aggressive “um, actually…” ever and stewing in silent-but-hardly-unnoticed resentment. But that’s not necessarily what’s going to drive people away. No, that is going to be the thing that I’m not even sure you’re aware that you’re doing, but you sure as hell are doing it anyway.

Now take a second and sit back because I’m about to drop what sounds like a digression at first.

Recently, I’ve been listening to an incredibly tedious livestream relationship discussion “show” that features a male host and a rotating cast of women – most, but not all of whom tend to be either OnlyFans models, influencers or folks whose job entails being sexy or attractive.

(The things I do for this job…)

Every episode entails – at least in part, these stupid things go longer than an average episode of Critical Role – the host (and occasionally some of his guests) grilling the women, asking intrusive questions and either insulting them, denigrating them, or encouraging his audience to pay absurd amounts of money to hear their comments read out loud to them. This often culminates with the host asking the women to rate their looks from 1 to 10 and then get on a scale.

The obvious point of the show, besides trying to slide retrograde ideas about dating under the radar, is to make women sit there and listen to the howls of resentment from an audience that sees them as the avatar for Jenny who wouldn’t go to the prom with them.

But one of the things I clocked right away was the many ways – from “ooooh, you thought that was subtle” to overt – the host and his fellow travelers play frame control games. Any answer given, whether it’s an opinion or otherwise, is challenged by the host and he demands an explanation. Every time, regardless of the words used, the underlying message of the host’s behavior is ”justify your opinion to me.” The point, of course, is to set a frame that says “I am the arbitrator of what is valid and invalid; you must convince me, or else your opinion is objectively wrong”. He wants to set himself up as an authority to whom the women are expected to both appeal to but also whose judgement they will accept. When someone doesn’t accept his judgement as being correct or treat him as the arbitrator of what is or isn’t valid, he gets almost comedically upset.

I bring this up simply because you’re doing this yourself. The only difference is that he’s monetized playing to s--theads who get upset that women are allowed to think that they’re sexy without a guy’s sign-off and who think that a watered-down, Dollar Store brand Jerry Springer knock off is the height of sophistication and class. And they’re willing to pay literally hundreds of dollars to chant “JERRY! JERRY! JERRY!”.

You, on the other hand, are doing it for free, and the only thing you get out of it is bile and loneliness.  

We can start with this: “How the hell is confidence based on imaginary self-ego boosting nothing but arrogant bull? When I see people doing that around me, I go out of my way to remind them of *objective reality*.”

Here’s a question for you: why? Why do you feel the need to go out of your way to “remind” people of “objective” reality? We’ll leave aside my incredibly high level of skepticism that you perceive anything objectively; what is it about someone having an opinion or belief bothers you so much that you choose to go out of your way to “correct” them? Why do you think that not only do they need to be “reminded”, but that they need to hear from you in the first place?

Do you think they’re going to thank you when you do this? Do you just get bothered so much that other people have an inner life that you don’t share and doesn’t match yours that it just gets under your skin like an itch you can’t scratch? Or is it just that you just resent other people being happy when you’re not?

Considering that you follow this up with “Being happy or confident without objective reason to be is just self-delusion. […] People don’t DESERVE to feel good unless they have objective value,” it certainly seems to me that your issue is that you’re miserable, they aren’t and that you feel like they shouldn’t be and so you feel like you’re called to “bring them back down to Earth”.

This, like I said, isn’t different from the host of that dumbass show I mentioned asking women to rate themselves and then peppering them with “oh, you really think you deserve to call yourself an 8? Huh? Huh? Get on this scale, tell me if you’re still an 8”. It’s just you being upset that someone else gets to decide how they want to feel without your approval.

Case in point: “[…]I can’t STAND unfounded opinions, which is apparently some kind of cardinal social sin. God forbid people should be informed before opening their mouths? This idea that every stupid thought that comes to every idiot’s head is equal to Einstein is sickening.”

So, how’s that been working out for you?

This is a “you” problem, chief. Making “you have a right to your INFORMED opinion” your entire personality was your choice, and that means you get to reap the consequences of it.

Under different circumstances – ones where you weren’t coming in looking for a fight – I would be more sympathetic. But considering the sum totality of your letter and your attitude the entire way through… this has all been a misery of your own creation.

There’re certainly times when people are interested in discussion and debate, but there’s discussion and then there’s “I’m not going to let this go until you tell me I’m right and you’re wrong and then I’m going to make you do it again the next time you say literally anything”. So, since you seem to not get this, I’ll make it clear for you: the social sin here is that you’re the one making this a problem. You’re making a production where most people will either have a mild disagreement before moving on, agree to disagree, or just overlook it because they know when and how to pick their battles. You, on the other hand, are determined to pick every fight possible. That’s too many battles; put most of them back.  

If you don’t like people having opinions which don’t meet your definition of scientific rigor, you’re welcome to find like-minded people to argue with. Losing your s--t at other folks about it mostly just makes you look like an under-socialized a—hole who thinks he’s the only person who can “see the Matrix” and mistakes aggression for being correct.

And considering how under-informed and subjective your opinions in this letter alone have proven to be, that’s pretty goddamn ironic.

Doubly so, considering that you say this: “…what I’m I supposed to conclude? That something’s wrong with JUST ME?”

In this case, yes. This is the very definition of a “you” problem. If you meet one person who calls you a horse, you met a crazy person. You meet two people who call you a horse, there’s a lot of weirdos out there. If three people call you a horse, it’s time to consider getting fitted for a saddle.

You’re the one who decided that people who don’t have “objective” value don’t get to be happy, while everyone else disagrees with you. You’re certainly welcome to keep insisting that you’re correct and everyone else is wrong like the world’s saddest Principal Skinner meme, but if you’re the lone voice insisting the world is crazy, perhaps it’s time to consider that you’re the person who’s wrong here.

You view things like “not being an a—hole” and “refraining from saying insulting things” like the labors of Hercules, and something that should be rewarded. You’re supposedly someone who’s the smartest man in the room, the only person who can perceive and value objective reality, and then say “I did all the stupid hoops ANYWAY, DESPITE thinking they’re stupid, for a whole year,” and then complain that you got nothing for it. As though everyone around you couldn’t tell that you were sitting there stewing in toxic resentment and waiting for people to give you some sort of prize for Not Being The Worst, This Time.

Doubly so, considering that women aren’t dumb and can tell the difference between someone who actually respects their opinion and someone who’s going through the motions in hopes that this may mean that they get to see their bra at some point.

Even if I grant you as much grace as I can and assume you’re being weirdly and unnecessarily hyperbolic, I find it hard to believe that you act like this and then wonder why people don’t like you.

But why should they, when you don’t like you? Because that’s what this comes down to. All of this is just you hating yourself and thinking that you have no value and projecting on others like your name was IMAX. The reason why “OBJECTIVE REALITY” is so important to you is that if you were to stop and accept that maybe you’re not in the least bit objective, you’d have to accept that you’re in a mess of your own making. It’s easier to choose to believe that your misery comes from How The World Works, rather than to accept that this is the consequences of your choices.

You’re not struggling to be happy; you’re struggling with the fact that people don’t like you because of the way that you behave, and you behave like an a—hole. You may struggle with some social cues because you’re autistic, but playing stupid frame control games and demanding that people justify themselves to someone they neither know, nor like or even respect isn’t a symptom or condition of being autistic. You insist on trying to position yourself as An Authority, get pissy when people won’t respect your authoretah, treat basic conversation like ritual combat and apparently go out of your way to try to s--t on someone else’s parade because you don’t like the floats.

And it sure as hell isn’t helping when you claim to be the arbiter of objectivity when you base your entire everything on the most subjective s--t imaginable: your wild-ass misinterpretation of just about everything.

Do you want to be happier? Do you want to maybe, some day, have friends? Or at least have people vaguely like you? Then the first thing you’re going to have to do is go get that chip on your shoulder surgically removed and start accepting that not only are you wrong, but that the reason why other people don’t value your opinion is that you’ve done nothing to demonstrate why it should be valued. We value the opinions of others because of our relationships with them, our understanding of their perspective and how their perspective is colored by their education, their upbringing and their lived experiences.

You know, those things that bring subjectivity into the mix.

We value other people because they bring value into our lives – and to be quite clear, that value is in the form of “we enjoy their company”, “they make us feel good” and “our lives are better with them in it than without them”. But we also have to find value in ourselves, that exists without the approval of others, because otherwise we don’t actually have value. We just have what other people are willing to give us, and that can be taken away or demolished at any time by random people for any reason or even no reason at all.

That’s the game that s--tbirds like the podcast host I mentioned play, and it’s nakedly transparent when they do it and the why of it is even more so: because they need to “bring these sluts back to objective reality” and shrink their supposed swelled heads. It’s s--tty dudes getting pissed off that women think highly of themselves while also not being willing to touch these loser’s penises. It’s about them wanting to be able to not just decide who gets to be “hot” or feel good about themselves, but also to make them pay for not agreeing to let those dudes control their reality.

You’re playing the same game and you’re not even playing it as well as they do. You can’t accept other people might value themselves when you can’t value yourself, try to force your opinion on them, complain about doing not even the bare minimum, and then you wonder why people don’t want to spend time with you.

If you’re determined to soak in your own misery like the world’s s--ttiest hot tub, that’s your choice. Trying to force other people into the tub with you is just going to convince other people that you’re alone for a reason and it’s probably better to leave it that way.

Start trying to like yourself, and you won’t feel compelled to try to convince other people that they shouldn’t like themselves either. Once you get to that point, then maybe you’ll start the first step of actually making some friends. Your call.

But like I said… how’s that working out for you so far?

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