Nerdly Advice – Boy Trouble
Nerdly Advice – Boy Trouble
Mar 17Sometimes nerds need advice. Jeff is good at substituting snarky one-liners for actual solutions to people’s problems, and that makes him an expert. He says it’s like a popular syndicated advice column as written by an obscure comic book character. He calls what he does Nerdly Advice.
Have a question? Email it to nerdlyadvice (at) gmail dot com.
Dear Nerdly Advice,
I’m a geek girl in her mid-20s, and I’ve never had a romantic relationship. I like to think I’m intelligent and interesting, and there have been plenty of geeky boys I’ve been attracted to, but I’ve never seen a spark of interest on their parts — or known how to identify it, if I have. I find I communicate best with people I have something in common with, and I can have great conversations with these guys, but it never goes anywhere beyond that. Sometimes I feel like nerdy guys are only interested in women who look like Emma Frost or Kitty Pryde (which I definitely do not), but I like to hope that isn’t really the truth. After all, I wouldn’t expect the guys to look like Superman!
So my question is this: how does a geeky girl go about meeting interested geek boys to date? What are the social protocols of nerd dating? What are the steps to overcome the social awkwardness of nerddom — on their part and mine? And how do you successfully flirt with a nerdy boy when you don’t look like Wonder Woman? I’ve seen a lot of advice columns give advice to nerdy boys looking to date girls, but I haven’t seen anything about nerdy girls wanting to date (nerdy) boys, so I’d love to hear any thoughts you have.
Thanks,
Lonely in Latveria
Hi LiL,
There is no better way to psych yourself out of dating than letting yourself get hung up on body image issues. Especially if you’re projecting Greg Land-drawn physiques onto the situation. I mean, those women Land is tracing are professionals, after all.
Attraction is not just a physical thing. There’s a mental element to it, too and at least in my experience it is the more powerful of the two. In short, and I know this sounds hella trite, it doesn’t matter what you look like. I mean, hell, people date me and I look like the love child of Grizzly Adams and the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man. So looks don’t matter.
Well, I mean, hygiene matters.
It sucks and it’s like tearing a band-aid off, but sometimes the best way to find out if someone is into you is simply asking. In last week’s peer into the mind of the geek boy, I pointed out that we can be stultifyingly shy at times and, for good or for ill, it will take some kind of confident advance by one of the two nerds caught in a romantic detente to get the other to commit units outside their borders. Trust your gut; not the butterflies-y feeling you get, but your gut. It will likely know if there’s real chemistry there or a one-sided infatuation, if you can make yourself consult it.
It’s okay to ask him. He won’t get weirded out. In fact, he’ll probably be relieved that that ice has been broken. That’s not me saying you have to be the aggressor, either. Just confirming that if you are, it’s alright as well as acknowledging that boys are dumb.
Final piece of wisdom: it’s not a race. Rushing into a relationship just to be in a relationship only guarantees that you’re going to be in a bad relationship.
