Ask Dr. NerdLove: How Do I Meet More Women?

Doctor,

I’m a 29 years-old guy with no dating experience whatsoever. Never been on date, never kissed, let alone had sex. The whole thing is so alien to me that I have a hard time picturing that ever happening.

I haven’t even had that many rejections because I don’t bother if they’re clearly not interested. Those times I did try something, they were actually just being nice and friendly. Everyone else shows all the typical signs of disterest and I just let them go.

I can’t even pinpoint anything inherently wrong with me. I’ve been through all the redpill and the blackpill depressing shit trying to find a reason, until I eventually saw it was unrealistic. I have a great career and my income is far above average, and it can’t just be about looks. I feel like I have “asshat” written on my face with magical invisible ink that only women can read.

Probably the only thing I can bet on is the numbers game, maybe I just have to meet as many women as possible and see if something ever happens? That said, other than online dating which has never ever got me a single date, how do you even meet women? I’ve read a lot of material online, nearly your entire blog included, and it still flies over my head as high as an airplane.

Maybe I was born in the wrong place at the wrong time, and I’ll probably never live somewhere else because of my job, so I have to make due with what I have. For context, I live in a mid-sized city in Brazil.

I haven’t ever met a girl through my friends who was single, not even through my female friends. Every one of them has always been either dating or married, so there was nothing for me to try. I’ve even asked my friends head-on about it and they scratch their heads and say something along the lines of “thinking about it now, I really have no female friends who are single”.

At my job it’s impossible to meet new women, as our work is B2B and my few female colleagues are married. They also don’t have any single friends they could help me meet.

My hobbies are extremely nerdy, such as reading, watching anime, playing video  games, also playing boardgames and RPGs with my friends. We also go to bars sometimes to drink and listen to some rock bands, but it’s not like I’d just stumble upon a woman out of nowhere over there.

I’ve looked all around for any clubs or groups focused on my nerdy hobbies, but there is no such thing here. Players are just in private groups like mine, there are no public gatherings or events, not even a book club. I’m not interested in dancing, cooking, volunteering or sports, the usually recommended hobbies. I’ve been to a shooting range and really enjoyed it, but it’s not a social hobby at all.

So what exactly is there for me to do? Will I have to start cold approaching people? No matter how much I study that subject, I can’t bring myself to do it for dozens of reasons.

Regards,
Lost Nerd

You know, LN, this is a topic that comes up a lot. In fact, it comes up with such regularity that it may well be one of my most covered topics, next to “I’m just too ugly to date.” And if you’ve been reading my column for very long – or even just do a casual stroll through the archives – you’ll see I’ve talked about the myriad ways and places where you can meet women, both via apps and in person.

Now, I’ve been saying for a while that while dating apps can be great, they’re best suited as a supplement to meeting women, not a replacement for meeting them in person. This is in no small part because the skills that you use to meet women on the apps are the same skills you use to meet women in person. And, quite frankly, those are skills that only get developed by practice… practice that can only truly be done in physical proximity to other people. So if you want better results overall, you need to work on being a more social individual, online and off.

But since I’ve talked about these to an absurd degree, I want to take a moment to talk about something that seems a little off-topic at first, but is actually incredibly relevant and important. And that’s the matter of luck.

So yes, we’re gonna talk about getting lucky and, importantly, how you can go out and improve your luck.

One of the things that people often don’t tell you about many things in life, but about dating in particular: it’s a numbers game. Finding women is easy; they’re literally half the population. Open your door, look around: boom, there’s women all over the place. Now, the key is that you want to meet women who are a) single, b) who are interested in sex and/or dating, c) attractive to you, d) compatible with you and e) within your acceptable age range. This is where luck kicks in. Finding someone to date – or even to just hook up with – requires the confluence of a number of circumstances. Circumstances that, frankly, you can’t control for. Nobody can. Unless you are Doctor Manhattan, you quite literally can’t account for all of the vagaries and variables that affect who’s around you, who’s available and who, importantly, is right for you.

That gets incredibly complicated very quickly, so we’ll do a quick and dirty distillation: you want the combination of right person, right place and right time. That is: someone who’s mutually attracted and attractive, in a place in their life where they’re emotionally and/or mentally ready to date and have the ability to date. If those three factors don’t line up, even someone who’s madly in love with you isn’t going to be able to make it work. They may not have the free time or the energy to give you the attention and importance that you deserve in a relationship. They may have just exited a long-term relationship and aren’t emotionally ready to get on that particular roller coaster again. Or they may find you physically or emotionally attractive, but you lack that x-factor that makes someone go “yes, that, more of that please.”

This is where luck comes in.

Luck, as one person put it, is the intersection of opportunity and preparation. The thing is, people don’t really understand what this means; they tend to assume that luck is what creates the opportunities. But that’s not it at all; that’s just random chance taken personally. Others assume that it’s all about preparation. That’s not it either; you can prepare for as many eventualities and variables as you possibly can imagine and you’ll still get blindsided by something you couldn’t possibly anticipate. Or you may just fail because even being supremely prepared doesn’t guarantee results. Chaos seeps into every system, no matter how orderly.

No, it’s the intersection of the two that’s important.

Think of it like playing blackjack at a casino. Blackjack is one of the most “fair” games at casinos. The odds are tilted towards the house, like all games at casinos are, but if you play properly, then you’re able to reduce the advantage the casino has over you. Play it even better and you can even shift the odds to being slightly in your favor. So, if you play properly, you have a much better chance of winning and maximizing your investment. This is the “preparation” side of luck. Opportunity is when moments arise that you can take advantage of. So if you’re a canny player and you see that the dealer’s show card is a six, you know that he’s more likely to bust. So you have the opportunity to push the dealer to bust while you play more conservatively. Similarly, if you’ve got an 11, you want to double down; you have a better chance of winning (or at least not busting) so, it makes sense to increase your wager. Or splitting 8s – that is, if you’re dealt two 8s, you want to split them and play them both like separate hands. These also increase the chance of a payout.

However, even if you play “perfectly”, you can still lose, because no system is so closed that chaos doesn’t seep in. You can double down and not get the card you need to beat the dealer. The dealer can get a natural 21, deal himself the cards he needs, other players may bust out or stay, affecting what cards you are likely to get and so on. So even playing the best way possible means that you can still lose.

That’s the intersection of preparation and opportunity. Preparation is the skill, opportunity is the moment when you can put that skill to its most effective use and take full advantage of the moment. But what people often don’t realize is that you can increase the chances of opportunities coming your way. If we keep going with the blackjack metaphor, you can increase your opportunities by learning how to count cards, or play at casinos that play with single decks rather than multiple decks. These don’t create opportunities; they just put you in places where opportunities are more likely to happen.

Now, having tortured that particular metaphor to death, let’s drag this back to dating and meeting women. As we’ve said: dating is often a numbers game and luck is a factor, and that this includes meeting women. But if you’re prepared, when the opportunity does come up, you’re able to take the greatest advantage. Preparation, in this case, means making sure your style and presentation is on point, that you’ve polished your social skills, that you’re in a good mood and ready and eager to talk to folks. Then, when opportunities crop up – there’s a sexy someone waiting in line with you at the Starbucks – you’re ready and able to take full advantage of the opportunity that presents itself.

Just as you can increase opportunities in blackjack, you can also increase opportunities in dating; that is, you put yourself in places where opportunities are more likely to occur. The most obvious example would be “getting out of your apartment”. It’s very difficult to meet women when you don’t go anywhere or do anything. Yes, dating apps exist, but the way they’re currently set up makes this inefficient and the way humans are wired means that you’re going to get a lot of false-positives in your matches. But by putting yourself out in the world, you’re going to encounter more women; encountering more women in general means that you’re more likely to encounter women who are single, your type, interested in dating or any combination of the three.

But you can further increase the opportunities by maximizing your exposure to women who are more likely to fit particular categories. You can, for example, be sure that you’re meeting more single women by going to events that are more likely to attract single women. Part of why bars and clubs are the default go-to for folks is because they put lots of women and men in a venue where mingling and talking to strangers is expected and encouraged; it’s not unusual or unacceptable to flirt with or go home with people you meet at those particular venues. You could increase the odds of meeting single women by going on, say, speed dating events or to mixers specifically advertised as being for singles. These all have their advantages and disadvantages, but they do increase the likelihood of meeting women who are single and interested in dating; they have self-selected for those particular events.

By the same token, you can increase the opportunity to meet women who share your interests by locating and spending time in the places and communities that they tend to favor. To use a somewhat problematic metaphor, you’re more likely to find deer when you stake out the places that deer are likely to eat or drink or bed down. So finding places were women that you’re most likely to be into congregate means you’re more likely to meet women you’re compatible with who may also be single.

So the most obvious answer is: go where your people are most likely to be.

This, however, also runs into certain issues. What if, as in your case, LN, you’re in a place where those communities are few and far between, or the culture means that women are less likely to participate? A lot of nerd and geek communities are still very unwelcoming to women; some nerds are gatekeepers, some see women as intruders and opponents while others see women who share their hobbies as something to consume, rather than a person who’s there to enjoy the hobby in her own right.

This is where you have a choice: you can either keep hoping that these venues will work out – decreasing your overall opportunities – or you can branch out. As I’ve said before, the key can often be being willing to be more flexible in what you’re interested in and expanding your horizons, rather than sticking to a very narrow and limited definition of your interests. The more specific you get with your list of what you will or won’t do, what you are or aren’t into and are or aren’t willing to explore, the more you narrow your options. You are, functionally, limiting the likelihood of getting lucky by decreasing the possibility of opportunities.

By expanding the venues you’re willing to spend time in and the interests you pursue, you increase both the raw numbers and opportunities for right person, right place and right time. Because here’s the thing I’ve held back thus far: chaos seeps into every system… but that doesn’t mean chaos is bad. Chaos can be good, too… because sometimes what it means is that you encounter opportunities you would have written off, otherwise. Think of this as the unspoken third part of luck: serendipity. This is the moment when chaos works in your favor and an unexpected event occurs that you couldn’t plan for.

So let’s say that, instead of going to your game night, you go to a sports bar instead. You’re not really a sports person, but you figure you’ll give it a shot; after all, everyone else seems to be having a good time, maybe it’s worth having more of an open mind about it and seeing what happens. And while you’re there, you meet a particular someone who seems nice. You strike up a conversation… and before you know it, you realize that this person actually is your type. You might never have swiped right on her if you’d read her profile on Hinge, and if you had assumed that no sports-loving woman could be your type, you might never have talked to her. But because you talked to someone in person, rather than made a snap judgement on an app, you had the opportunity to learn more about her than you would’ve otherwise. And because you took that chance, you were able to meet someone who might not have been your usual type, but who turns out to be someone you really are compatible with.

Now, dragging this kicking and screaming back to your question, LN: what do you do? Well, if you’re not having luck thus far in your search and you want more opportunities, then you need to change your search parameters. Being too wedded to only looking in your specific nerdy interests may not work, so look for compatible interests, things that are tangentially related. You may not find an anime club, but how about some foreign language classes? You may not be finding organized get-togethers, but what about local online communities for, say, Critical Role fans or Dimension20 aficionados? Rather than sticking specifically to fantasy and sci-fi, how about book clubs devoted to mystery, true crime or even romance? The Venn diagram of romance and urban fantasy is virtually a circle these days, after all.

You also want to challenge yourself when it comes to your interests. Are you not interested in dancing as a concept or because you’ve tried it and it didn’t work? A lot of times, we tend to decide that we like X and don’t like Y and it becomes more axiomatic than lived experience. We don’t realize that maybe our tastes have changed, or our dislike comes from external issues – bad experiences, cultural narratives about what nerds are ‘allowed’ to like, etc. I never would’ve thought I’d enjoy going watching hockey until a friend invited me to a game and I ended up having a great time. Hell, Ted Lasso’s got me eager to watch my local FC play… something I never would’ve expected. So it’s worth taking the things that you think you’re not interested in and giving it an honest try with an open mind and willingness to be surprised.

Other times, it’s worth taking up the hobby because of the benefits. You may not be interested in cooking qua cooking… but being able to prepare tasty meals for yourself and others is an incredibly valuable skill. Cooking is a pro-social skill; people who are good at cooking and who like cooking very rarely only cook for themselves. They want to cook for other folks. That’s a pro-social and nurturing skill that makes a person much more attractive because it sits at the intersection of “confidence”, “skill” and “kindness”. And a guy who can cook for himself – especially someone who’s good at it – is someone who will be more attractive to women because it says that he’s someone who’s got the skill and maturity to be a grown-ass adult, rather than looking for someone to take over the role of caretaker in his life.

And, in particular, what kind of dance is it that you tried? A lot of folks will, for example, look to latin dancing in order to try to meet women. It makes sense, salsa, merengue, cha-cha, etc. are very energetic, sensual or even sexy dances; it seems like a natural place to meet women who’re likewise sexy and sexual and energetic. But every bro out there had the same thought, and so a lot of those classes become sausage fests of dudes who’re only there to hit on women, and end up driving them off. Hip hop dance classes, swing dancing and other forms of dance, however, are less likely to have as many douchebags and, correspondingly, a higher number of women.

So if you want to meet more women, increase opportunities and thus create higher odds of getting lucky? Then you want to stop defining your interests – or areas you’re willing to explore – so narrowly. Not only are the odds good that you would like more things than you give yourself credit for, but by broadening your horizons, you become a more well-rounded, more interesting and thus more attractive individual. The whole point of The Most Interesting Man in the World is in part the breadth of his interests and experiences, after all. The more things you’re open to trying or getting into, the more chances you have for incredible experiences that lead to great stories afterwards. And, in the process, you meet more people and have more opportunities.

Yes, I can already hear folks saying “wait, are you saying that the way to meet more women is to change everything about who I am?” And the answer is… well… yes. And also no. First of all: if staying exactly who you are right now isn’t exactly giving you the results you want, so sticking to that makes little sense. You can fish in the pool in your backyard all you want but you’re not gonna catch anything. But there’s also the fact that “you” are a flexible concept. Developing new interests isn’t a betrayal of who you are or an abdication of your sense of self; it’s broadening your definitions to include more things.

Not to mention, going in with the assumption that you might well enjoy these things and want to try them out, rather than saying “well, I guess I’ll give it a shot if I have to” also translates to being a more generally positive and optimistic person… qualities that also increase odds of good luck and success.

To be sure, not every class, club or gathering out there is going to work out for you; sometimes it really is just a case of ‘nope, don’t like sports, even after learning about it and giving it a solid try’. You may not be able to make the head shift that finds similarities between your local football team making it to the World Cup and a pro DOTA team making it to the International or between fantasy football and Warhammer. That’s fine; not everything is going to be for everyone. But it’s better to give it an honest shot and find out, than to rule it out purely because ‘that’s how it’s always been.’

But seeing as what you’re doing now isn’t working, it makes sense to expand your horizons and discover these new and unexplored sides of yourself. It makes you a better, more interesting person in general… and it will help you get lucky.

Good luck.