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Dear Dr. NerdLove,
I am a 14-year-old high school girl who is a virgin, and I have been feeling insecure about this fact for some time. I am also insecure about my past (and present) as a friendless awkward person.
I have always been a very shy person who has struggled to make friends. For many years when I was younger, I was often too nervous to approach people, and did not have the social skills necessary to comfortably engage with them (It may be worth mentioning that I do not have diagnosed social anxiety, or any other kind of mental or neurological condition). I have spent the last year or so working on these issues (by means of advice from people I know, blogs, and irl practice) and am now better at socializing. I still get nervous in some situations, but not as much. I have better social skills too, and am capable of making friends. I do not feel that my social struggles are over, but now is the first time in my life that I feel at least a bit socially competent. All of the friendships I have made so far have not lasted very long due to a variety of reasons, but I am better at making friends and less uncomfortable with not having them (although I do not know how big of a problem this is). I am sometimes lazy with my socializing, however, in that I sometimes do not try to make new friends if I do not currently have any. I also sometimes feel as though current friendships are too “stressful”, which has caused many of my friendships to erode or even end.
Recently, it has come to my attention that I am still a virgin: I am not quite sure what I should do about this. For one thing, I have never even tried to get a boyfriend, as I was either not interested in making the effort to find someone or was too shy to make a move on somebody I found interesting. This fact makes me think that I could just be overthinking the whole thing, and that I should either just go try to date somebody and see what happens or just chill out and be at peace with being a virgin. If the perfect guy sat next to me in class tomorrow, though, I have no idea what I would do about it. I don’t know a whole lot about actually starting romantic relationships. I am also pretty sure that most people my age do not have many encounters outside of a relationship, so I think the fact that I am not great at dedicated relationships (platonic and romantic) is at least part of the problem.
What I think may be the main problem, though, is the lack of effort and interest that I feel like giving towards a relationship. I already have a very low social battery with platonic friendships, and am not entirely sure if I could even handle the responsibility and dedication of a romantic relationship. I can handle having a bunch of friends, but I need frequent breaks from them or I start to get stressed. I don’t have any dating experience (obviously), but I am 80% sure that a strong friendship is a necessary base for a healthy relationship. I have never tried to get a boyfriend, but am unsure of whether I could get one in the present with how lazy I can be, as well as the fact that I do not have a dedicated and long-lasting social circle. Who would want to date a friendless girl? I don’t think I am particularly bad-looking or anything, it’s just that I am very weird socially. And even if I magically got a boyfriend, would I really know if I am ready for the dedication of a sexual relationship? Or am I just too young to know yet? I feel ashamed of being a virgin, but at the same time I am worried that I am wasting mental energy on something that I might not even want, something that I only like the idea of. I wouldn’t really want a boyfriend for the sex, but for the validation from having someone who likes you so much. I am mostly alright with being single, but I can’t help thinking that the grass is greener on the other side.
I don’t know if I should work on my social skills, my self-esteem, my laziness, or if I should just try to care less about losing my virginity. If you could try to help me out, I would be extremely grateful.
The Last American Virgin
OK so normally I wait to the end to get to my “here’s what you should do” phase of the letter but I’ll just skip to that part right away so you don’t miss it, LAV:
Ready? OK:
JESUS TAPDANCING FROG, YOU ARE FOURTEEN. Being a virgin isn’t the last thing you should be worrying about, it shouldn’t be on your list in the first place. If I’m being blunt, I didn’t have to get past your age to the rest of your letter; no matter what else you’re worried about – and trust me, we’ll get to it – the fact that you haven’t had sex yet is not something you should be freaking out about. Like, at all.
This isn’t a purity thing, believe me. It’s a YOU’RE FOURTEEN thing. And look, I remember how I was at fourteen – both with the surging hormones, terminal social awkwardness (not to mention diagnosed ADHD) and the toxic bullshit about men’s sexuality. I remember thinking that I was socially behind everyone around me, having had no relationship experience to speak of outside of a summer camp “romance” and a lot of ideas of where I was “supposed” to be. I was convinced that I was the last virgin on the planet and that I was going to be able to vote before I so much as saw a boob in person and I was hornier than a six-peckered goat.
But I also remember how goddamn dumb I was at that age and the things I thought were brilliant ideas. Trust me when I tell you: neither you nor your peers are truly ready for the risks and responsibilities that come with sex. And this is before we even get into the conservative religious shitbags who overturned Roe V. Wade and are looking at access to birth control next, bullshit double standards about male and female sexuality and sexual activity, Boomer handwringing over teen sexuality, the gaping hellmouth that is sexual education in the US, or the fact that too many adults think porn is a documentary series, nevermind kids.
I’m a big believer in “have sex when you’re ready,” but trust me: you ain’t ready yet.
So, alright, we got that out of the way. Let’s deal with the rest of your letter.
Right off the bat, one of the primary issues is simply being an introvert. Having a low social battery can make it difficult to have the energy to spend time with friends, especially with 8+ hours of enforced social interaction at school. One of the most important lessons an introvert can learn at a young age is how to gauge their social energy, how to manage it so they can socialize when they want to, and to not apologize for needing to take a break… even when your extroverted friends disagree.
However, it’s also important to learn to not use “introvert” as an excuse when what you really mean is “intimidated or worried about interacting with people”. This can end up creating a pattern where you avoid the things that seem intimidating or difficult and excusing not facing them by claiming introvert status. The problem is… avoidance doesn’t actually make things better. It just increases the discomfort until it goes from being “uncomfortable” to “an actual phobia”, which is a lot harder to untangle. While yes, you want to learn how to manage and expend your energy efficiently, you also want to learn the difference between “having low energy and needing a break” and “how to push through the discomfort and make it to the other side”. As I’m always saying: social skills are skills, and skills only improve through deliberate practice. And getting good at them means being willing to push through the pain period to competence.
That part can be important, especially since, as you noted, sometimes you get lazy about trying to make friends. However, one thing leaps out at me: you mention how you’ve frequently had friendships errode or end because you found them to be stressful. You don’t say how they’re stressful or why this causes them to end. That’s something that’s probably worth digging into. Especially since there’s a very large difference between “knowing how to make friends and maintain friendships” and “knowing who to be friends with“.
High school has long been a weird morass of social confusion; teens are dealing with the raging trash fire that are their hormonal changes, managing their sexuality and gender identity, trying to establish themselves as independent individuals instead of just what their parents want to mold them to be and the confusion of a social pecking order that bears more resemblance to a medium security prison than real life. You end up with a lot of unwritten (or, in the post-social media era, written, blogged and TikTok’d) “rules” that were put down by other people who also have no fucking clue what they’re talking about that only seem to contradict one another and make things worse for everyone, everyone’s confused, nobody’s happy and anyone who tells you that high-school are the best years of your life are either lying, deluded or peaked before graduation.
Oh, and these days, you end up with folks who watched the wrong TikToks, learned about words like “narcissism”, “lovebombing” and “gaslighting” or social justice terms like “privilege” and never, ever use them correctly, but only as weapons to be wielded against people they don’t like.
All of which means that people – especially folks with relatively low social experience or fluency – tend to end up in friend groups that are actually bad for them. Not “bad for climbing the social ladder” or “bad because they’re not cool” but “bad” in the sense of “these are toxic people who treat you like shit and will convince you that you deserve it and should put up with it because that’s how friendships work”. It was bad enough when I was a high-schooler, but at least school couldn’t follow you home. Now it follows you everywhere thanks to the ubiquity of smartphones and social media.
*Ahem*
A large part of your high-school experience should be about making friends. But as I said, you want the right friends, high-value, high-quality friends. And high value doesn’t mean “of the right social status” or “in the right clubs or sports teams”, it means people who make your life better. People who love and support you, who encourage you without just enabling your bad habits, who inspire you and motivate you to be your best self and who ask the same of you in return. They’re the ones who respect and understand your boundaries, but also have boundaries of their own, who can disagree with you without making it a fight, but who also share similar or compatible goals and values.
That can feel like a tall order, especially in the closed system that is high-school. But learning how to meet people and suss out who’s right for you and who isn’t… those are skills that will serve you well over time.
The other issue I notice in your letter is that you seem to feel like you should want certain things – a boyfriend, sex, etc. – but mostly don’t. Here’s something a lot of folks won’t tell you: that’s totally fine. If you’re not seeing what the big deal is about having a boyfriend or girlfriend, that’s totally cool. That may change, or it may not; both are just fine. If it’s not something you actually are interested in – as opposed to feeling like you’re supposed to – then it’s better to just let it be instead of trying to force the issue. I will say that, if you do find yourself wanting a partner, that high-school relationships tend to be learning experiences more than anything else. Despite how they feel at the time – and believe me, they feel like the most dramatic things possible – the people you may date in high-school are rarely the people you’re still in a relationship with ten or twenty years down the line. Hell, most of the time, those relationships don’t last past graduation or your first year of college. If you do decide to date… well, my advice would be “go at the pace you are most comfortable with, and don’t let anyone push you to go faster than you want,” as well as “don’t invest too deeply into it,” in no small part because who you’ll be in just a couple year’s time will be radically different from who you are right now.
And as for sex? Well… look, hormones are a thing and teenagers have a long and inglorious history of diving head first into waters without having the first clue of what they’re diving into. But most of the time… they’re not as prepared as they think they are. My general advice for everyone, guys, gals and nonbinary pals, is that high-school is best used as a time to learn about yourself and get ready for next stage of life. That may be college, or it may not be, but that’ll be time when you’ll be best positioned to explore yourself, take advantage of increasing levels of independence and find out more about who you are and who you’re going to be.
So for now? Don’t worry about the other side of the metaphorical fence; the grass always looks greener because people will keep insisting that it is, regardless of its actual quality. Work on those social skills and being able to talk to everyone and anyone; this will serve you well for your entire life. Work on your self-esteem, because that will make life easier on you as you grow up. And more than anything else? Just find out more about yourself and what you like. All of that may change over time. Hell, it may change a lot. That’s fine. You’re in a place in your life when you have the most freedom to try things out and experiment with different aspects of yourself. Take advantage of that. The more comfortable you are in your own skin, the more the rest will sort itself out over time.
Good luck.
Hey there Doc, very huge fan of your work!
I’m genuinely a huge fan of your approach to dating and boosting confidence here on the site. I’ve definitely tried to follow your lead in terms of dating, however I keep running into a large obstacle in my dating life: I live in New York City.
While there are TONS of people here, and tons of single people here as well, I keep finding myself in this odd middle ground of what seems to make dating possible here in the city: I’m not supermodel-level gorgeous or the most eccentric person in any room. While these things don’t really matter to me (I’m quite comfortable with who I am: a kind, soft but incredibly curious nerd), it seems to matter to everyone else. Dating apps have been a wash although I put my nice fun and artsy photos on there with a bio, and going to the local bars or events don’t particularly work out because everyone is very very very exclusive to the groups they come in with. It seems as though there are ridiculously high standards in any way that you turn: If you aren’t hot or rich you can’t stand out at the bars or clubs, or – as in the case in my neighborhood – being of a specific gender presentation seems to really be a detractor as well. That is, my presentation of being mostly masculine even though I’m gender-questioning.
I’ve been wondering for quite a while whether this is some kind of calling to change myself in a specific way to meet the standards of where I am, or a calling to move somewhere that might not have as many people but they would have realistic standards. A bit torn on what to do in this situation. A little bit about myself just for context:
– I’m a bald male-presenting person, just kinda nerdy and can sometimes give off a George Costanza vibe
– While my ideas and personality is more radical, I’m not tatted, pierced up, or ripped
– While I’ve experimented with a more feminine presentation and got more attention from when I did so, part of it never really clicked with who I am. Though I’m absolutely not masculine in any way except appearance, which if that ain’t the nonbinary struggle I don’t know what is
I think at the end of the day I have this creeping notion that there’s a standard for gender-questioning people aesthetically that I just don’t meet, and that standard is all I’m able to find where I live making it to where I don’t know if I particularly “fit in” to any circle here. I guess my main question in this is “Do I stay or do I go?” and if I stay, is there any advice you would give to someone struggling to fit in but not compromise who they are.
Hope this wasn’t too vague!!!
Best,
Lost In The Middle
Let’s set the dating app issue aside for the moment; Being Good On Dating Apps is a skillset in and of itself that’s actually separate from “being good at dating”. It sounds to me like you have two issues. The first is that you don’t seem to be comfortable with yourself just yet, which is a pretty foundational issue. The other is less about living in New York City and more that you simply haven’t found Your People, which is a geographically agnostic problem. These problems tend to overlap quite a bit; if you’re not entirely sure who “Lost In The Middle” is – or you’re not comfortable with being them, yet – then it’s much harder for you to find Your People. Solving one tends to solve the other, which is why I recommend working on both.
Figuring yourself out, and how to craft the best most polished version of your authentic self is going to be the single biggest boost to your social success. Once you understand who you are and how to be the best version of You that you can be, the easier it is for you to identify, locate and connect with the people you’re most compatible with.
The first thing that leaps out at me is… well, you say you’re comfortable with yourself, but the way you frame it doesn’t sound like you like yourself that much. Even in the way you describe yourself, you throw a lot of conditionals or descriptors that sound kinda negative. I mean, when you say “soft, but”, that sounds like you’re saying that ‘soft’ is something that needs to be excused by what comes next. The same goes with how you say you come across. Let’s be real: George Costanza is not exactly a lot of people’s go-to for “someone I want to be when I grow up”. So part of what you may want to start with is finding a better role model or archetype. It doesn’t need to be someone who matches you physically as much as what matches your ideal self – someone you can point to and say “yeah, I’d be proud to be like that.” And hey, you can find inspiration or role models anywhere. I have friends who’ve found that they relate most to characters from comics or video games and were able to take that energy onboard and make it part of who they are. Others have aimed at more spiritual targets, seeing themselves better able to relate to mythological figures that spoke to them and incorporated aspects into themselves that spoke to them.
That doesn’t mean “ok, you need to look and/or act like Mollymauk Tealeaf/ Gomez Addams/ Delerium/ Hancock/whomever” but find the folks whose aspects most resemble the parts of you that you want to bring forward. Gomez is all about the enthusiastic love and joie de vivre even for things that are weird or unusual. Hancock is very much about showmanship, presense and self-confidence in a world that says he shouldn’t have any of them. Delerium is very much the concept of kintsugi; the fact that something broke doesn’t mean that it’s broken and that it can become something new and beautiful for all that it had been shattered before. Letting that start as your guide to highlighting the parts of you that you want to accentuate and bring you closer to your truth works wonders for learning to love who you are and who you can be.
And honestly, finding your truth and living it will go much further than trying to fit someone else’s standards, especially when those standards are narrow and restrictive as shit. So you’re not ripped or tatted and pierced. And? If those aren’t things that speak to you or things that you don’t want, then don’t do ’em. I didn’t get my tattoos for anyone else but me. Granted, I’m fortunate enough to live in a place and time when they’re not unusual but fuck knows I get some shit when I travel sometimes. But for me, they’re less adding something to me and more about revealing something that was already there. If that’s not right for you, then don’t sweat it and find the things that are.
That includes your gender presentation. You’ve got a masculine exterior, and your interior is more fluid, but more feminine presentation doesn’t really click. Ok, so what other ways might? The way you describe not fitting in with your neighborhood and the idea that you need to meet some aesthetic standard as a nonbinary person sounds more like a “before diagnosing yourself as depressed, first make sure you’re not surrounded by assholes” kind of problem. Gender fluidity and androgyny tends to get coded as “tall, thin and white” in many communities, and folks who don’t meet that Ziggy Stardust Special are often made to feel like they’re deficient or inauthentic in some way. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that this is what being nonbinary has to mean for you. You can have male-coded traits or present physically as masculine and still be non-binary or genderfluid. Baldness, for example, tends to read male, sure… but God knows there’re plenty of women and enbies who’ve rocked the bald look quite well. You can play with masculine and feminine presentation in a lot of ways without going full bore in one direction or the other. Making a point of playing around with dress, makeup, style and other coded behaviors can help you find your ideal place on the gender presentation spectrum that feels the most right for you. It’s trying to fit into someone else’s mold that creates the most difficulties.
And hey, maybe you might not be the most hip or a la mode. That’s fine, especially if that’s not who you are. Fashion, as Oscar Wilde once said, is a form of ugliness so great that it has to change every six months. Whatever is “in” is protean and changes constantly. Authenticity changes when it needs to, not with the winds, and it’s far more attractive.
Figuring that part out will help you with finding Your People, too. I mean, ok, you aren’t getting attention in the NYC club scene. But my question would be: are you a Club Person to begin with? Or are you going to them because that’s where we’ve all been told to go try to hook up and find dates? If you’re not really a club-going type, then you’re probably not going to mesh well with the folks who are, anymore than someone who’s more about experimental avant garde theater is going to fit in with Wall Street bro culture. But just because a particular group or community has superficial commonalities, that doesn’t mean they’re Your People either. A lot of folks may be nerds and geeks, but find that a lot of geeky groups are entirely wrong for them; someone who enjoys Stardew Valley or Capybara Spa Simulator rarely vibe well with the Soulsborne fanatics who think that having optional difficulty levels are A Crime To Great To Be Borne.
So figure out the places that you, and the people you’re most likely to be compatible with, are likely to hang out. Where are those spaces, those social gatherings, those communities? Maybe they’re in different parts of the city than you currently go to. Maybe they’re in the outer bouroughs, in neighborhoods that haven’t been gentrified and commoditized with kicky names and skyrocketing rents. Maybe it’s just been waiting for someone like you to create that space, so other people like you can finally find it.
Or, yes, it may not be in New York at all. It could well be in Poughkeepsie or Saratoga or, shit, Burlington or Chicago. But before you declare yourself done, maybe make sure that the issue isn’t that you’ve been looking for love and community in all the wrong places first.
So start by finding yourself and your truth, so you can learn to love yourself the way you deserve to be. Then find your people and your community. That’ll help you find the right people for you, and make it that much easier to find the love, sex and relationships that you’re looking for.
Good luck
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