Estimated reading time: 20 minutes

Long story not very short, I have Kallmann’s syndrome, which means I didn’t go through puberty until I was diagnosed at 20. As all my friends started getting interested in girls, I just continued being a kid and drifted away. Think Steve on American Dad but without the sex drive. I also started to grow prominent breasts. I also didn’t have a sense of smell (a symptom) but did not know that until the diagnosis, so you can imagine there were incidents. I also have a severe eye twitch that’s mostly when I’m nervous or when I’m looking people directly in the eye.

Anyways, in college my psych major roommates got to the hormonal disorders section and said “Hey that sounds like our buddy that looks like a 12-year-old girl”. So, I started treatment for the next five years and became a damn good-looking dude if I say so myself. I had to move home and transfer. Then I failed out of college, got a job, lost that job, and moved back to the town I went to college in. I reconnected with my roommate and a guy I only knew before peripherally. They got to come along as I figured out puberty and dating in my 20’s, quickly losing my virginity and then getting a girlfriend and finishing my degree at my original college. The girlfriend and I break up, I started dating again, and here’s where everything blows up.

At this point it’s still my three friends. One couple (Jake and wife) and my former roommate (Bob). They see me at a party on a second date with a woman, and then never see her again as it didn’t work out. A few months later while talking about sex, Jake discovers I slept with the woman from the party, meaning we’ve been with the same number of women. This sends him into a ten hour increasingly drunken spiral calling me a freak of nature and that I couldn’t be with more women than him. It got really nasty, eventually I threw them out and told them to never talk to me again. They never have. I continue dating and was with a lot of women, eventually meeting a woman I dated for the next four years. In the meantime, Bob and I drift apart as we both stop drinking. This meant my only social outlet was my girlfriend and a message board on a major comedy site. 

At the time, my job was nights, and my gf and my schedules didn’t match up. Eventually she was unsatisfied and left shortly after I lost my job. I got a temp job and then decided to move since I had no reason to stay in the area. I moved where my sister was and got an amazing new IT job. I went on a few dates. Unfortunately, the next year was 2019, both my cats died in very upsetting ways, and the forum was shut down. At this point I realized I had never really developed a new social group and was completely alone, but my plans to rectify that were destroyed by Covid and the hard work of getting everyone set up for remote work and later returning to the office.

And here we are, seven years later, and I’ve been failing to fix my life. 

My problem is that I’m 45 and I don’t know how to get over the initial “what the fuck is wrong with you?” bump. I’ve never had group chats or sent selfies. When I tried to text my friends in the 2000’s, they wouldn’t reply. Texting was still new then. I have barely any pictures of my life and I think people think I’m making it up. My friends all left when they started having kids, so my experience with children can be counted in hours. I’ve only been on vacation twice as an adult. I just flew on a plane for the first time in 40 years for work last year. I’ve never left the northeast before that, let alone the country.

I know people at work love me. They get so excited if they find out I’m going to be at an event. People talk about how hilarious my stories are. I’m so well known that people at other subsidiaries reach out to me for help. I want to try to make friends, but it’s been so long I think it looks weird. There are a few people I know have very similar interests to mine, but they’re in departments that I have to play bad cop with regarding budgets and hardware. And I’ve had so many bad work experiences that I keep it surface level only. But I can’t seem to find local nerd groups or anything in rural New Hampshire. And I’m worried that anyone I let in will just stab me in the back again. Or worse, given that I’m not the most masculine guy. Even supposedly progressive LGBQT people have groped me to find out what gender I “really” am. 

In the dating scene, every time I try to talk to women on Bumble, I panic and go silent. One had nine children (all adults). I only have my parents and two siblings. I barely have a concept of a close family, let alone dozens of relatives. Another I mentioned the plane thing to and got too embarrassed to continue when she asked why. I keep thinking how I’d compare to previous partners given how weird I am. I worry about how I have prominent breasts. I worry that I am a freak and don’t realize it. I worry about the fact that if every single person in my life has left me that it means I must be the problem. 

I recently discovered the Yakuza series of games, and instantly felt a connection with Ichiban who spent 17 years in prison and exited at the same age I currently am. The feeling of being disconnected and out of touch with everyone around him. Having to fumble and figure things out with no safety net. That’s pretty much what I feel like. I lost a decade of my life but I don’t have an excuse for why. Even when I had friends and girlfriends, I was mostly alone. They’d always be somewhere else. The idea of someone taking care of me when I’m sick is a fantasy. I’ve never gone grocery shopping with someone, or had them help me with laundry or the sheets. Nobody has made me dinner in decades, and it’s been years since I’ve cooked for someone. That line in Everything Everywhere all at Once about taxes and laundry hit me like a brick. I just don’t know how to open up when from the outside I look like a giant walking red flag.

Resident Alien

Let me put some of your anxieties at ease, RA: you do not look like a giant walking red flag. Like,  at all. If anything, you are vastly overestimating the importance of the things that you think are “normal”, including how much people care about them.

Now, your anxieties are understandable and earned – you were mistreated by the pack of assholes you called friends and peers at a time when you were dealing with very real health issues. Worse, you were doing so at a time when people were considerably much less understanding and much shittier about gender non-conformity.

(Not, mind you, that we’re doing great now; if anything, we’re watching a deliberate regression being spurred by fuckheads looking for any grievance or excuse for hate in the name of a political advantage. But the 90s and 00s were holy shit bad.)

However, I need to emphasize this part, because I want you to understand where the real fault lay: with the festering pustules and cheesedicks who were being assholes to you. Your biggest problem in your 20s and later wasn’t Kallmann’s syndrome, it was that you needed better friends.

No, seriously. Jake’s behavior is not only not normal but so outrageously over the top that I have to wonder what the hell was going on with him. The apparentrage he felt over the fact that you managed to – hang on, I need to make sure I read this correctly – have a sex life is no past the bounds of normal or acceptable behavior that “normal” isn’t even a speck on the horizon. That was a dude who apparently has been sitting on some issues that were so deep-seated that he’s going to make some lucky office of therapists very, very happy when they get to send all their kids to college on this dude’s bills alone.

And to be clear: the infected buboes and assholes includes the LGBTQ folks who thought groping you was the best way to figure out your gender. Sexual assault doesn’t become less assault-y when they think it’s a goof or a joke-y joke, and no amount of progressiveness, sex-positivity or any other label is gonna make it ok either.

All of that shit is, and again – I need to emphasize this – not your fault, nor is it the norm. These people were assholes of great and gaping profundity and thankfully, there’re far fewer of them than there are of cool people. And there will be fewer still in your life when you remember that you don’t have to tolerate people who demonstrate their assholeishness to you. Boundaries and an unwillingness to put up with line-stepping behavior are going to be the disinfectant that help keep the shitty people in your life to a minimum.

But enough about the past; let’s talk about your future. Because you do have one. You just have to let go of that past so that you can start living in the now and planning for that future.

Many of the things you’re holding up as signs of being out of touch to the point of being off-putting and frightening are… nothing of the sort, really. You aren’t going to freak someone out because you don’t have a huge, close-knit family and they did; I can guarantee you’re not even the fifteenth person they know who’s had a distant family or difficult upbringing. Nobody is going to care if you’ve never taken selfies or been part of a group chat. The person who cares the most about any of that is you, and the only reason why it’s weird is because you’re afraid it’s going to be weird.

There’s no reason to be embarrassed by the fact that you haven’t traveled much or flew for the first time as an adult, and it’s hardly as though you’re exposing some deep, dark secret or generational curse. People may be surprised, sure, but it’s not like they’re going to judge you for it. Certainly not after you explain. I promise you: folks understand concepts like “don’t have a lot of disposable income”, “not able to afford plane tickets” or “don’t have a lot of opportunities to travel”.

And look, I get it. Whether you wanna reference Ichiban, the Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer, Ollie Queen, Steve Rogers or anyone else who ended up forcibly out of step with the world, you look around and you see all the things you missed out on, never heard of or simply don’t get. These were things that weren’t part of your world, for every understandable reasons. And you know what? That’s fine. There are always going to be things that are going to seem new, strange or even exotic, simply because they’re not part of your daily existence.

But that’s not the same as being marked out for having different experiences or having not done some things that other folks have. It may be unusual, in as much as it may be different from their experiences growing up, but I promise you that folks can understand that different people are going to have different experiences and lifestyles. If that’s something that actively bothers them… well, that’s the living definition of a “them” problem, not a “you” problem.

The vast majority of the time, when you run into people whose life experiences are different from yours, they’re going be curious and want to know more. What they’re not going to do is point at you and yell “OUTSIDER!” or treat it as a red flag.

I remember a time in college – far longer ago than I care to think about – where my friends looked at me like I grew a second head during dinner when I melted cheddar cheese on top of a slice of apple pie. This was a flavor combination they had never heard of, never even contemplated, and they thought it was one of the weirdest things ever… for about five minutes. Afterwards, nobody cared and we all moved on to more important things, like debating whether Douglas Adams was better than Terry Pratchett.

Did it ever come up again? Nope. A couple even tried it and repented their heathen ways.

Similarly, Dr. Mrs. The NerdLove has almost shockingly large gaps in her pop-culture awareness; she didn’t have regular access to a VCR until after college and grad school means that anything that happened between 2004 to 2009 – whether movies, TV or even popular Internet memes – are complete mysteries to her. I had to explain a meme referencing the Numa Numa dance because she had literally never heard of it until now.

Does this mean that I think less of her or think she’s a “walking red flag”? Fuck no. It just means that sometimes she doesn’t understand a reference I made because I’m basically a Junkion that speaks Internet instead of TV. 

(And if any of you reading this are scratching your head… thank you for illustrating my point).

Shit, just talking pop culture with my young Millennial/older-Zoomer friends feels like talking a different language. Have I ever seen a single episode of The Amazing Digital Circus, Owl House or Hazbin Hotel? Nope. When there was that brief “everyone is pretending to not know who Kacey Musgrave is for clout” fracas, I could tell you with 100% honesty that I’d never heard of her in my life before that moment. I know who Hasan Piker and Asmongold are strictly through cultural osmosis, memes and weird GOP freak-outs.

Do any of my aforementioned younger friends care that I don’t know any of these people? Only in the sense that they got excited to show me their favorite things for the first time. Otherwise, it was no different than my liking Dungeon Crawler Carl and my wife not having the slightest idea who that is.

There have always been and always will be people who have had wildly different life experiences, and the things that seem mundane and universal to us will be alien to them. And by that same token, things that are completely normal to them will be weird to us. Any reasonable person’s response will be “Huh, really? OK,” and that will be the end of it. Especially if you can let go of the unnecessary feelings of shame and just explain it.

Let me give you a free tip that will change your life: people look to you to see how they should respond to things. They’ll take the context clues you give – cadence, tonality, emotional inflection – and respond appropriately based on that information. If you tell a story with the cadence of a joke, people will laugh. If you tell a story with the cadence of a tragedy, they’ll tear up. Rueful embarrassment mixed with humor will often get sympathetic chuckles, while telling a story with shame will make them feel that this was something shameful.

Take your Kallmann’s syndrome. You lay it out pretty clearly in your letter – it’s a hormonal disorder, you got treated, had an awkward couple years and bingo-bango-bongo, you’re a good-looking cat with some notches in his belt. This is precisely the same way you should be handling the other areas in your life that you feel make you a “walking red flag”. All of it is entirely normal and frequently situational; none of it is disqualifying, freakish or even vaguely abnormal. It’s just how life broke for you, that’s all.

So if you find yourself in a position where someone asks about some issue from your past or why you haven’t done X or know about Y… just be matter of fact about it. Roll it out to them like it’s perfectly normal, they’ll respond like it’s normal. If you say “my friends and I weren’t really texters”, they’ll take that in stride. But if you are explaining this like you’re confessing about the time when you were barely seventeen and you once killed a boy with a Fender guitar… yeah, they’ll feel weird about it. Because you are the one treating it as being weird.

You’re not a big walking red flag, RA. You’re not even a pink flag. You’re just a regular guy. A completely normal dude. You had an undiagnosed medical issue as a young man and some shitty experiences with shitty people, but… well, whomost amongst us, y’know?

I do think you would benefit from some cognitive behavioral therapy to manage these anxieties, mixed with some old-fashioned talk therapy to help get comfortable with opening up to people and learning how to let them in. But honestly, most of what you need is to stop beating yourself up or treating yourself as though you were a freak. I promise you: they will take any weirdness as part of what makes you uniquely, wonderfully you. You need to give yourself a chance to let them show you the truth: none of this means that you’re undeserving of love, care or companionship.

There’re lots of people out there who clearly want you to be part of their lives. You know many of them already. It’s time to let go of that past and start looking towards building an incredible future instead.

You’ll be ok. I promise.

All will be well.

Hey Doc,

How do I (M/36) know what I actually want?

I’ve never been in an actual romantic relationship, and had only been on a couple dates before my late 20’s. When I was in school, I never had any luck with women: I was kind of an asshole back then, and I was also a master of selectively ignoring when women were actually attracted to me, out of both fear of reading too much into something and fear of change if I were actually right. But I didn’t realize those were the causes until years later.

Right out of college, I had a brief romantic-but-not-physical relationship we had feelings for each other, but she was in a long-distance relationship with a guy she was constantly on the verge of breaking up with, and I let myself get overly invested and strung along. It never went anywhere, and I felt bitter about that for a long time… but, as you’re fond of quoting, it’s possible to commit no mistakes and still lose, and I’ve since accepted that I don’t have any regrets about it. Again, something it took me a long time to reach.

For a while in my late 20s and early 30s, I tried dating sites, and could generally get a date once every few months, but I didn’t click with any of them, and the overall experience escalated my depression from “manageable” to “awful.” (I’ve lived with it for years and know how to take care of myself, so it’s usually manageable – and, before you ask, it’s not an issue as I write this.) A couple years ago, I gave up online dating to give myself time to recover and haven’t touched it since, but that’s left me with a new issue.

I dread the idea of returning to online dating: I don’t want to face that grind again. The women I’m friends with are either in relationships or have, at some point, turned me down; the prospect of getting to know someone and asking her out also terrifies me, because it feels like I’d be betraying and hurting her. And, most scarily of all, the thought of facing the rest of my life alone no longer fills me with the same existential horror it used to. I have a decent life in other respects, with my own place, a cat, meaningful hobbies, and friends who care about me. Maybe, I tell myself, the cost to myself and others of seeking romance isn’t worth the possible reward.

Is this maturity? Am I finally accepting that romance isn’t for me, the same way I’ve accepted that other dreams I had when I was younger aren’t achievable? Or is this just complacency and learned helplessness? How can I tell the difference before I end up with another set of regrets?

The Great Pretender

If you want my honest opinion, TGP… this doesn’t sound like maturity to me. What it mostly sounds like is asking for permission to give up.

And, look, if that’s what you want to do, then go right ahead. You don’t need my permission. But I think it’s important that you acknowledge that this is what you’re doing. And, if/when you do acknowledge it… you may want to ask yourself why you’re giving up. You make a comment about the “cost” to yourself and others of seeking romance and I’m curious as to what you think that cost is.  You give some hints, and I’ll circle back to those in a second, but I really want you to think about the why of it all.   

You’ve mentioned the way the dating apps wrecked your mental health and I’m sure it didn’t help. But if I’m going to be honest, I think there’s a different issue here. I think the thing you’re avoiding is the same thing you alluded to as being the problem in your youth: fear. Not a fear of change, but a fear of risk and taking chances… though not the risks nor the chances you might be thinking.

The example you give of the one “relationship” you had is a prime example of being unwilling to take chances… in this case, the chance that this wasn’t the last time you’d find someone you liked who maybe kinda sorta liked you back. Except… well, for real this time, instead of leaving you stuck in limbo.

I don’t mean to reopen an old wound just to pour salt in it, but I think you may have taken the wrong lessons from this. Not to get nitpicky here, but the situation you described in college is not an example of making no mistakes. That’s actually a pretty good example of a pretty significant mistake: holding onto a bad situation because you’re hoping there’s still a chance to pull out a win, despite all evidence to the contrary. To mangle a poker metaphor, you had crap cards and you were praying to draw an inside straight when you should’ve folded before the flop.

And believe me, I get it. It’s hard to give up on the first – and what I’m sure felt like possibly the last – time you felt like someone was into you. It’s an entirely understandable one, God knows I’ve made the same mistake more times than I care to think about, but the lesson to take from this is that sometimes the best thing you can do is walk away, and a lot sooner than you did. It’s the reminder to yourself that you don’t want to hold onto false hope when everything about the other person’s behavior ultimately tells you that nothing is going to change, and when it does, it almost certainly isn’t going to break your way.

But doing so requires a willingness to take a risk. This felt like a bird-in-the-hand situation, but that wasn’t just false hope talking, it was the voice of “this is the closest you’ve come, and you’re never going to get this chance again.” And if you’ve convinced yourself that people don’t like you – as you clearly did – then this is going to feel like your last, best hope for happiness.

It’s not. But it feels that way, because… well, frankly, because you see being interested in someone as being an imposition at best and harmful to them at worst. And that’s your real problem. You don’t seem to believe you’re actually loveable, even when you already admit there were people who were interested in you. You just refused to let yourself believe it and pretended they weren’t.

Well, there’s your problem. This is why I hammer that whole “if you don’t love yourself…” cliché so often; because if you want to be loved, first you have to accept that you’re lovable. Not that people won’t love you; it’s that you won’t believe them when they do. Instead, you put yourself into positions where you accept being treated like an option because you don’t believe you can be a priority.

So my first suggestion is that you need to start learning how to love yourself.

My second suggestion is that you should reconsider your declaration that depression isn’t a factor here. I’m not calling you a liar, but I am saying that I’m not sure I believe you when you say that depression isn’t a problem here. I’m sure you believe it, but the way you describe things sounds like depression. Depression isn’t just “the blues”, and it isn’t getting better because you feel numb instead of “sad” or “gloomy”. Depression is more often anhedonia – where you just give up on things because it doesn’t seem worth it and everything just feels numb and gray and pointless.

And to be perfectly blunt, the way you are talking about the depression itself sure as hell sounds like you’re not actually treating it. “I can manage it” and “I’ve lived with it for years” isn’t the same as “I’ve been talking to a doctor and I’m taking Wellbutrin about it.”

Personally, I think talking to a doctor and possibly a therapist is going to be a better way to go here than giving up. But to do so, you’re going to also have to be willing to challenge some beliefs about yourself… starting with the possibility that you do deserve to be loved and to be happy.   

But I can’t live your life for you and I can’t determine your priorities for you. If you have decided that you’re just done and don’t want to try any more, that’s your call. But I think you should own that this is what you’re doing, instead of passing it off as “maturity” or “accepting reality”.

Good luck.