My Love Life Has Been Broken For Years. How Do I Turn It Around?

Estimated reading time: 18 minutes

Dear Dr. NerdLove:

I’m not sure exactly what this is meant to be. Seeking advice, ranting/venting. But I’ve just got some stuff that I need to say to someone, and it feels too embarrassing to talk to anyone I know about.

My (32M) dating life has been pretty dire for a few years now, and it has had a significant impact on my mental health and wellbeing. I have completely lost confidence in myself and feel utterly undesirable. Any time it seems like something is going my way I get my hopes up again, but when it inevitably fails, I am completely crushed and am unable to get out of bed or do anything for days. I am just stuck there, with all of my failures running through my head, feeling completely worthless.

Yes, I need to go back to therapy, but I recently moved countries and am unemployed and don’t have easy access to that right now.

The thing is, it wasn’t always like this. I’ve never been a true player or anything, but in my 20s I had multiple serious relationships, and did a fair bit of casual dating. The point where things flipped was during covid. During that time, I was in a country that had extended lockdowns. When it started, I was still in my mid-late 20s, but by the time things got back to normal I was just shy of 30. After that, things sharply dropped off. I remade my dating profiles, pretty much exactly as they were, just with some updated pics, and I got straight up zero likes from real profiles. I try not to use them much now because that is not particularly helpful for my confidence, but every now and then try it out again. I’ve deleted and remade profiles so many times, taken new photos, tried a bunch of different bios, tried boosts whenever they offer them for 99c, nothing seems to change. The only thing that got me matches was leaving my height (5’7) off the profile, but I didn’t engage with any of those people as it was just an experiment and most of them had “tall guys only” or something to that effect in their bios. My height has never been much of a problem for me before. I never felt particularly hindered by it, though maybe a little self-conscious from time to time if my confidence had dipped, but now it bothers me, along with my bad skin and acne.

I’ve never been good at meeting people in real life, but I have been trying to focus on that and getting better at it lately. In my 20s, the only times I had success were when girls came to me and initiated. Trying to do this now, I have probably averaged one sexual/romantic encounter a year. These rarely make me feel good as they have all been with people I was not attracted to/didn’t feel a connection with. I hate doing that, because I think it is a shitty thing to do to someone else, but sometimes the desperation/loneliness/alcohol leads you to do things you don’t want to do. I’m not bad at talking to people, I can make friends and connect with people fairly easily. It’s not something that came to me naturally (More than one mental health professional has suggested that I am likely autistic) but I put a lot of work and therapy into it and feel that I have fairly well acquired this skill now. Probably the biggest problem I have in this regard is approaching/flirting with people. I really struggle with doing this in a romantic setting.

I do meet and connect with girls that I like, but it always ends up being a torturous, negative experience. Mostly with me being relegated to being a friend, or something nebulous that keeps me hopeful, but never actually goes anywhere. To give some examples, I met and connected with someone recently in a very intense way. I have only met a few people in my life where we connect this well, but it has been a painful and upsetting experience. It always seems like it is going somewhere, but ends up hurting a great deal. She invited me to a gig the other day, and it was great, we were flirting and having fun, but I went to the bar to get drinks and came back to find her cuddled up with some other guy. This basic scenario has happened multiple times with this person. I’m not someone who feels that I need to own someone that I’m not with (or am with really). We’re not together, so it is fine for her to see other people, but it just seems that every time I get my hopes up, or things feel good, something like this happens and absolutely crushes me. Similarly, I met a girl at a bar when I was out with a friend recently. It was going great, she was cool and a bit weird, like me. She invited me to come to her upcoming birthday party. But then I went to the bathroom at one point and came back to find her making out with some other guy (not my friend).

The last person that I slept with, I met on a night out with this same friend of mine. My friend went home and she was still hanging around, so I took her back to my place. But in the morning, she told me that, while she had greatly enjoyed the night, she was actually interested in my friend and asked me to give him her number and “put in a good word”. Now, in her defense, this friend of mine is a truly beautiful guy, but still. Why say that? That was a blow my confidence really didn’t need.

So yeah, that’s basically how it has been going. At this point I feel like I just want to stop trying. It is just too painful to get excited about something, because then it just hurts even more when it falls apart. It also means that I’m pretty much always going in to something with the expectation that it isn’t going to go well. I’ve been trying to learn more about flirting and approaching, but it is hard to find stuff that doesn’t read like PUA bullshit or isn’t super cringe. My confidence is basically non-existent now. Especially if I ever end up in a situation where it feels like I’m competing with someone else. I’m not a terrible looking guy, probably pretty average, but I’m short and I struggle with chronic acne due to a medical problem. As soon as someone tall and good-looking enters the picture I just feel pathetic and want to disappear and go home and cry.

Anyway, I’m trying to not be too self-pitying here, but I just want to point out how I’m struggling with this. I have passions that I am dedicated to, hobbies that keep me busy, and I exercise regularly. Sometimes I can channel the frustration and feelings of low self-worth into my passions, with the mindset of empowering and improving myself that way, but lately I’ve been feeling so crushed that I can’t bring myself to do it.

But yeah, more than anything, I just needed to vent this out and get opinions on my situation. I would love some advice, or harsh truths, or whatever thoughts you’ve got. This submission definitely doesn’t advertise my qualities, and I don’t believe that I am entitled to sex, or love, or a relationship. But I’m frustrated by my failures and still lost for a reason that my dating life changed so drastically and suddenly. My appearance hasn’t changed significantly, aside from looking older, my social skills are better, and my personality is not significantly different. The one thing that I can imagine is the case is that, in my 20s, the women that were in my dating pool have no problem with a cute little guy, but for the women looking for guys in the 30s, that doesn’t fly so well. There’s likely more to it than that, things that don’t revolve around one specific insecurity of mine, but I don’t know what they are.

Flipping Switches

Alright, FS, this is one of those times where I think the best thing you can do for yourself is give yourself permission to not date for a bit because I think you’re trying to wrestle with too much all at once. You’re going to be a lot happier and a lot more successful if you give yourself a break and stop trying to recreate a world that doesn’t exist anymore, for a life that no longer exists either.

Now normally I dive into the inner game issues first – and trust me, we’ll get there, this is going to be an important part of your recovery – but I think this time, what we need is to focus on the bigger picture and some of the issues that are external to you before we get into your particular drama.

To start with, there’s the giant elephant in the room: the COVID lockdowns. Nobody came out of those unscathed and anyone who says they did are either lying to themselves, lying to other people or haven’t fully processed it. This was an intensely traumatic experience of the sort that we – and in this case, I mean world wide – haven’t dealt with since The Spanish Flu in 1918. This was, quite literally, a world-changing event, and even four years later, we still haven’t come to terms with just how much this has changed things. Part of the problem is that people honestly went feral and we’re still having to relearn what it means to live in a society, especially one with so much collective trauma. It affected how we see relationships, how we connect with each other and how we treat one another – in person, online, as friends, as family and as lovers.  

You, in particular, make the point of “I went in in my mid-20s and came out 30”, but then tried to pick back up like nothing had changed; you say, specifically, that you remade your profiles exactly as they were, just with new pictures. Ok but… you’re not the same person you were back then and the people you’re compatible with or want to meet aren’t the same. Part of the problem is that you’re creating profiles that aren’t really reflective of who you are or what you’re looking for, so much as trying to get back to where you’d left off. But the world has moved on, time marched forward and you’re no longer the person you were when you first wrote those profiles. Trying to continue on like you had before isn’t going to work.

And then there’s the fact that, frankly, the apps aren’t the same either. There’re reasons why I have been beating the drum so much about why the apps are far less useful than they were before, and much of it comes down to the fact that they’ve drifted away from their purpose. The point of the apps aren’t to help people actually connect with potential partners, they’re to increase value of the company for the shareholders. This is why they make no bones about the fact that the algorithms limit your profile unless you pay money to “be seen”; their goal is to get you to convert, not to find someone to date, the same way the point of Candy Crush is to get you to buy boosts, not to have fun playing a match-3 game.

This is precisely why I keep saying that you can’t base anything about yourself on the responses you get on the apps. The apps aren’t an objective measure of anything, and certainly not when the invisible algorithm has its thumb on the scale that decides who sees you and who doesn’t. Consider the very existence of “rose jail”, where you’re expected to pay money for people that the app is specifically saying “yeah, we know these are the people you really want to see”. They are putting the people that the algo thinks you would most want to match with or who would be better for you behind a paywall. That should tell you that this isn’t about you, it’s about the platform.

Next, there’re the experiences you’ve had while out meeting people. I’ll get into a few of these, but some of them – like the woman who you took home – are examples of what I mean when I say people went fully feral. The fact that you took someone home who, let’s be honest, you weren’t that into, is part of it. But the way she behaved afterwards – saying “hey, that was nice but I really want to fuck your friend instead, mind making that happen for me?” – isn’t about you at all. That was about her being deeply inconsiderate and almost comical in her rudeness. I totally get why that hurt but holy hopping sheep shit that’s the sort of thing you expect to see in The Last American Virgin, right before she got tossed out the front door with her clothes, not in real life.  

(It’s also kind of bitterly ironic seeing this behavior from women when fuck knows there’re men who have done precisely the same thing to women they went home with; turns out, it’s a shitty thing to do to someone, no matter the gender of the people involved.)

I know that knowing this intellectually isn’t the same thing as how it makes you feel but trust me: what she did was entirely about her and says nothing about you.

However, I think we now need to start narrowing in on you and your situation more. There are external issues that should be addressed, like your acne. You say that you have a medical condition that’s causing it. I presume that this means that it’s a side-effect, not a symptom, but regardless, that’s something to bring up with a doctor. If you know the cause – for example, you’re on a steroid for your condition – then talking to your doctor about changing the medication to one that has fewer side-effects is a first step. But the next step should be talking to a dermatologist. Even if this is the result of something you can’t necessarily change on your own, a dermatologist can help you find a treatment that’ll be effective (and without draining your wallet like certain subscription-based treatments).

Whether it’s an ointment or cream to deal with the acne itself, a medication to reduce sebum and oil production, a face wash that isn’t irritating your skin or even something like laser treatment of your skin directly, this is something that should be a priority for you. Not just because acne is unsightly but because it’s a symbol of feeling like your life is out of control and just stacking debuffs on you like the worst Baldur’s Gate boss fight imaginable. Getting your acne under control won’t just give you the gift of better skin, it’ll give you the feeling that you’ve got control of your life again. That you can make meaningful and positive changes for yourself. Reminding yourself that you have agency and control is part of how you break that feeling of helplessness; even the small ways you assert control pushes back on that despair.

But it’s the internal issues that need the most care and attention, and are why you should give yourself permission to take a break from dating for a while. Right now, you’re in a place where you’re almost desperate to find someone, and that’s working against you. It’s part of why you’re having these horrible experiences when you go out. You’re so thirsty to find love and affection and validation that you’re investing way too much in these chance encounters and giving yourself outsized expectations about what they mean.

The woman who you had that “intense” connection with is a prime example. This is one of those times where you were so excited that things seemed to be going well and you felt like maybe this person was into you that you read way more into it than was actually there. I think in your eagerness to see light at the end of the tunnel, you got way out over your skis and interpreted friendliness for flirting. I don’t think you were “betrayed” to find her cuddling with a dude when you came back from the bathroom, I think you were seeing her with either another friend or someone she was already in a relationship with and your ego took the hit. And even if it was a case of her finding a guy at the bar that she was into… well, like I said, I think that intensity you experienced was entirely one-sided and entailed your misreading things.

Believe me, I’ve been there and done that, especially back in the bad old days. I didn’t just buy the t-shirt, I printed the t-shirts and opened a t-shirt emporium to sell them to others before franchising it world-wide. And trust me, I did it to a far more cringe-worthy level than this. My friends still have stories.

This is part of why I think you need to give yourself a break. It’s a lot like getting frustrated when playing video games and you’re stuck on a particular boss fight or especially difficult puzzle or platform. You get frustrated, you get angry and you get tunnel vision. You want to get through this so badly that you taste blood, but all that happens is that you just keep doing worse and worse. And a lot of that is because you’re wearing yourself out. You’re burning through all of your energy, you’re getting fatigued and it’s making you sloppy. Taking a break and getting some rest means that you recoup that energy, your brain processes the lessons you’ve been learning and when you come back to it the next day, you breeze through.

So it is with dating. Right now, you’re pushing yourself harder and harder, as though that’s going to fix things. But it won’t; it just exhausts you, depletes your reserves and leaves you worse off than before because you’re running on empty. You’ve got nothing left in the tank, but you’re pushing harder and harder because you’re so focused on just GETTING WHAT YOU WANT. But that gets in your way. Taking the time away lets you recharge and recoup, and that will free up the energy, resources and bandwidth that you’ll need to do better, make better choices and see things more clearly.

Because right now, the choices you are making are hurting you. They’re why you’re getting hurt so often – both because you’re over-investing and getting overly excited, but also because you’re making bad decisions. You have some success when you’re pursuing people you’re not actually attracted to, because you don’t feel the need to “perform” to the same level you do with others, but it also means that your success in those areas actually feels worse than failure. It makes you feel worse about yourself, it makes you feel guilty for what it may make them feel, and it just reinforces the idea that you’re a broken loser.

You’re not, but it feels that way.

And the reinforcement of it all is part of why you feel like you’re in competition with others and why you feel every disappointment so much more deeply. You’re winding yourself up with the expectation of these incredibly high highs, without realizing just how much that contributes to the depths of the lows you’re running into. You don’t have the bandwidth to moderate those expectations to something more realistic, and it plays into what you already beat yourself up over.

But then there’s this part right here: “but when it inevitably fails, I am completely crushed and am unable to get out of bed or do anything for days. I am just stuck there, with all of my failures running through my head, feeling completely worthless.”

The last thing I would tell you is that if you’ve had multiple mental health professionals tell you that they think you may be autistic, then it’s worth your time to get a formal diagnosis. Getting confirmation one way or the other is going to be helpful. If it turns out that no, you aren’t, it may point in directions that might provide answers; you could well have a form of ADHD with the RSD combo platter, for example. But if you are autistic, then getting that label and diagnosis opens up resources for you to work with it. Part of the problem a lot of neurodivergent people have is that they’re trying to fight their condition instead of working with and around it. It’s a lot like trying to swim against a strong current; you can do it if you really want to make the effort, but it’s going to be exhausting and it’ll take you twice as much effort to get half as far. Learning to swim with the current means that you actually figure out how to get where you want to go, without wrecking yourself in the process.

All of this is a lot to deal with, I know. And quite frankly, I don’t think trying to force your way through your various road blocks with regarding to dating is helpful right now. Taking dating off the table and focusing on these other, foundational issues should be a priority for you, because it’s going to make returning to dating a much smoother, easier and more rewarding process. It’ll be like dropping weights that you never realized you were carrying, right when you’re trying to run a race; suddenly you’ll feel light as a feather and faster than you ever were before.

It’s time for the love of your life to be the love of your life; to love yourself enough to work on these issues that’re dragging you down and to build your life to a place where you’re happy, energized and ready to take on the world again.

You’ll get there. You just need to give yourself permission to put this part of your life on pause for a little while to work on the rest. It’ll be waiting for you when you’re ready to come back.

You’ll be ok. I promise.

All will be well.