Paging Dr. NerdLove

Men, especially heterosexual men, tend to have very few deep, emotional connections, and of the ones they do have, very few of them are with other men. And that's actually a problem.

Men are dealing with an epidemic of loneliness and isolation and it's literally killing us. But despite the damage that loneliness can cause, men have a hard time finding and fostering emotionally close and intimate relationships. Why are male friendships so shallow and transitory and what can we do to build the relationships we need?

Show Highlights:

• How loneliness is literally hurting men
• Why men have a harder time building closer, stronger social ties than women
• How society inadvertently teaches men to avoid close friendships with other men
• Why toxic masculinity prevents men from from building the relationships we want
• How the ways men try to bond actually makes it harder to actually become close with their friends

... and so much more.

Related Links

Detoxifying Toxic Masculinity

Why We All Feel So Lonely

What Men Really Need

The Surprising Need For Male Intimacy

Defining a Modern Masculinity

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Everyone and their dog will tell you that confidence is sexy, it's probably the oldest trope in dating advice besides "just be yourself". And, in fairness… they're right. Confidence is an important part of being attractive, and not having confidence is going to hold you back. Of course, nobody ever tells you just how you're supposed to get that confidence. It's easy to talk about being confident when you already feel it. When you don't… well, as far as dating advice goes, "just be more confident" is about as useful as telling someone "it's easy to fly; all you have to do is throw yourself at the ground and miss!"

But what makes it even harder to develop your self-confidence is that a lot of people don't understand what confidence actually is.

This week, it's time to break down what confidence is, what it isn't and 5 tips that you can use right now to unlock powerful, unshakable self-confidence.

Show Highlights:

• The mistake that people make that makes it impossible to build their own self-confidence
• Why even the most accomplished people may not feel confident
• What unconfident men all have in common
• How you sabotage your own self-confidence
• Why failure is the key to confidence

...and so much more.

Related Links:

Learn To Be More Confident

Find Your Swagger

How To Discover Your Style

Dump Your Toxic Friends

How To Avoid Self-Sabotage

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What is it that makes one person creepy and another person attractive? Why do some men set off women's Spidey-sense while other men can do the exact same things and be perfectly fine?

Guys - especially ones who aren't the most socially well-calibrated - worry a lot about being creepy by accident. They worry that being a creeper, even if it's entirely unintentional - will start be the start of a long process that begins with being called creepy and eventually leads to their dying alone in a cave because they've been kicked out of all society, everywhere. But what is it that can cause even seemingly perfectly normal behavior to make people feel uncomfortable... and how can you avoid it?

Show Highlights:

• Why being creepy isn't about who's hot and who's not
• How society makes it harder for women to trust their instincts
• The psychology behind why certain behaviors make women uncomfortable
• What behaviors trigger women's sense of danger and why
• The key to avoiding being a creeper

...and so much more.

Related Links:

On The Nature of Creepiness

The Science of Being Creepy

Socially Awkward Isn't An Excuse

Yes, It's Still Creepy When Brad Pitt Does It

How To Read Body Language

Don't Be a Creeper

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Recently, we've been talking about toxic masculinity and all of the ways that it damages men on the individual level and society on the whole. One of the enduring questions is: so what do we do about it.

Part of the way we start end the damage that toxic masculinity does and help heal some of the pain is to talk openly and honestly about some of the issues that come bundled in the toxic masculinity package. And one of the biggest issues is the topic of sex - especially how it affects men who aren't having it.

A lot of people - men and women both - feel ashamed of being virgins, and honestly, the way we treat virginity is profoundly fucked up. And it can be especially troubling for male virgins because there's a lot of cultural bullshit caught up in masculine identity and sexuality. Sex is a core component of toxic masculinity; your value and measure of a man is in how much sex you have and how often you have it. If you haven't had any… well, are you really a man at all?

It's time to talk about the shame, the stigma and the frustration that comes from being a virgin when you don't want to be.

Show Highlights:

• How our brains drive our frustration with being virginity
• Why toxic masculinity is behind the shame of being a male virgin
• How society creates pressure to lose your virginity as soon as possible
• Whether being a virgin is a turn-off to women
• Why there's no such thing as "too late"

...and so much more

Related Links:

The 20, 30 and 40 Year Old Virgin

The "Problem" With Male Virginity

The Virgin's Guide To Great Sex

Sex For Beginners

How To Be An Amazing Kisser

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Want more dating advice? Check out my books at www.doctornerdlove.com/books

Over the last couple of weeks, it seems as though the world has been talking about incels - people who refer to themselves as being involuntarily celibate. But while we are all bringing attention to the existence of incels, but there aren't many resources for people who want to stop being involuntarily celibate.

What is the real issue that drives otherwise good people to the incel community? How can someone who calls themselves involuntarily celibate break the cycle and escape the hate and misogyny that's inherent in the incel scene?

Show Highlights:

• Why getting laid and sex workers aren't the solution to the problem with incels
• How incels doom themselves to failure when they try to get better
• Why sex and sexual frustration isn't the root of the problem
• How the incel community deliberately makes people feel worse
• The key to fixing the real problem that's driving incels

... and so much more.

Related Links:

The "Problem" With Male Virginity

Your Attitude Controls Your Dating Success

Where Do You Get Your Validation?

Unlearning Helplessness

Why We All Feel So Lonely (And What We Can Do About It)

Amwell Online Therapy

Escape from Incel: Redditor explains how he extracted himself from the toxic subculture and rejoined the real world

Listen Here Download Here

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The question of "how do I get out of The Friend Zone" is among the top Google searches out there when it comes to relationship advice. The idea of the Friend Zone as a sort of dating Stalag-17 has driven more people into the Pick Up and Red Pill community than almost any other topic.

For a lot of guys, the Friend Zone is the ultimate expression of the dating binary: you're good with women or you aren't, and there's nothing that you can do about it. Guys find themselves in platonic relationships with women that they're attracted to because they don't really know what to do or they're to afraid to do what's needed. As a result, you have people who are understandably and legitimately frustrated by a situation that they don't fully get, or know what to do about it.

So this week: there's no BS, no snake oil and no creepy, manipulative tactics. Just everything you need to know about why you're in The Friend Zone... and how to get out of it.

Show Highlights:

• What most men don't understand about The Friend Zone
• How you ended up in The Friend Zone in the first place
• Why the way most people try to leave The Friend Zone never works
• What you need to do to change the nature of your relationship from platonic to sexual
• The number one mistake men make when trying to escape The Friend Zone

...and so much more

Related Links:

How To Get Out of The Friend Zone (Without Losing Your Friend)

Why Men and Women Can Never Be Friends is Bullshit

Anatomy Lesson: How I Left The Friend Zone

How To Be "Just Friends"

Avoiding The Friend Zone

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One of the long-running questions that men have tried to solve has been why women choose to date and sleep with some men over others — and, more importantly, how we could become those men.

This is something that a lot of men get wrong, in no small part because one of the mistakes guys make is that they tend to look in the wrong place. What women tend to find attractive isn't looks or status or money, it's value. Women who're interested in men want to find a high-value man.

But the question is: what does that value look like and how do you become a high-value man?

Show Highlights:

• What men get wrong about what women look for in a man
• Why looks, money and status aren't as important as you think
• How to build and demonstrate your value
• How confidence and neediness affect value
• The difference between a high-value man and someone trying to fake value

... and so much more.

Related Links:

How To Be A High-Status Man

What Matters More: Looks or Personality?

How To Demonstrate Value

Instant Charisma

Finding True Confidence

Don't forget to subscribe and review us on iTunes , Stitcher and on YouTube.

Like the podcast? Consider becoming a Dr. NerdLove patron at Patreon.com/DrNerdLove

Want more dating advice? Check out my books at www.doctornerdlove.com/books

Toxic masculinity doesn't mean that that being a man is toxic, bad or even undesirable. At the same time non-toxic or positive masculinity doesn't mean apologizing for being a man or trying to be as gender neutral as possible.

While toxic masculinity refers to behaviors and beliefs about manhood and masculinity that are lauded as positive and to be emulated when, in reality, they're painful, detrimental or destructive to the individual or society as a whole, positive masculinity expands what it means to be a man - physically, emotionally or even socially.

But it's while easy to talk about what positive masculinity isn't, it sometimes can be hard to conceive of what it is. So let's examine just what positive forms of masculinity look like in the modern era.

Show Highlights:

• Why toxic masculinity isn't about apologizing for being a man
• How positive masculinity exists beyond Terry Crews and Captain America
• How Mr. Rogers' gentle, caring manhood influenced a generation
• Why sex is an important part of positive masculinity
• What it positive masculinity says about how to be a man

... and so much more.

Related Links:

What Can We Learn From Jessica Jones?

Captain America and the Power of Non-Toxic Masculinity

The New (And Impossible) Standards of Male Beauty

What Can We Learn About Masculinity From Pacific Rim?

The Broken Masculinity of The Punisher

Don't forget to subscribe and review us on iTunes , Stitcher and on YouTube.

Like the podcast? Consider becoming a Dr. NerdLove patron at Patreon.com/DrNerdLove

Want more dating advice? Check out my books at www.doctornerdlove.com/books

What do Men's Rights Advocates, popular self-help gurus, the alt-right and the movie Fight Club all have in common? They're all trying to answer the question of "What's wrong with men?"

It's pretty undeniable that men are facing a tipping point in today's society. Whether we're talking about the changes inspired by Me Too movement, the fact that women now outnumber men in undergraduate programs across the country, the way the economy impacts gender roles or the ongoing question of just what does it mean to be a man now… men are in a state of change and flux.

And there are a lot of men out there who feel lost, confused, even a little scared. But there are people out there who use those anxieties against us. Why do men feel so disconnected and lost in this day and age and what is the answer to finding our masculinity again?

Show Highlights:

• Why Fight Club remains relevant today
• How MRAs, the alt-right and Jordan Peterson use a mythical "lost masculinity" as a recruiting tool
• Why men feel disconnected from being men
• Why the need for intimacy pushes men into hate movements
• How men use violence to substitute for connection

...and so much more.

Related Links:

Be Proud of Being A Man

Detoxifying Toxic Masculinity

Defining a Modern Masculinity

Find Your Community

Don't forget to subscribe and review us on iTunes , Stitcher and on YouTube.

Like the podcast? Consider becoming a Dr. NerdLove patron at Patreon.com/DrNerdLove

Want more dating advice? Check out my books at www.doctornerdlove.com/books

Normally when I talk about dating issues, I'm talking about issues that primarily affect men, from a man's perspective. However, it can also be incredibly useful to look at the dating issues that women face as well. Not only does this help overcome misconceptions that men often have about the dating experience for women, but also illustrates ways that our own misunderstandings about relationships and what women want can get in the way of dating success. So this week, I'm talking with Jenna Birch, author of The Love Gap: A Radical Plan to Win at Life And Love about her book, what women go through in the modern dating world and what straight men might want to know about dating from the other side of the equation.

Show Highlights:

• How men and women approach dating differently
• Why what we say we want in a partner and what we actually pursue are often so different
• Laser thinking vs. Web thinking
• How Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs can affect your love life
• Why backburnering may not be a bad thing after all

And so much more...

Related Links:

The Love Gap: A Radical Plan To Win At Life And Love

What Do Women Really Want In A Man? - https://youtu.be/jTjqlaLUUpM

Is She Right For You?

Five Times You Shouldn't Be Dating

The Dating Advice People Need to STOP Giving

Five Behaviors That Ruin Relationships

Don't forget to subscribe and review us on iTunes , Stitcher and on YouTube.

Like the podcast? Consider becoming a Dr. NerdLove patron at Patreon.com/DrNerdLove

Want more dating advice? Check out my books at www.doctornerdlove.com/books