Estimated reading time: 17 minutes

Hello Doctor NerdLove,

I found your website when I was looking online for some advice. This is about my brother and I hope it’s okay that I write in even though it’s not really about me. I’m just trying to figure out some way to help him. I looked around at some other places on the internet but most of it either seemed like a scam or was just people being awful and negative. Your site seemed different, like you actually wanted to help people.

So anyway, I come from a pretty big family. There was 9 of us kids, all girls except for my brother. He’s the oldest and he’s about 6 years older than me, so he’s in his early 30s now.

We grew up way out in the country and our family was never real big on all the new technology and stuff. My brother was always kinda the odd one. He’d spend hours just walking around out in the woods by himself or sitting up in the loft reading old books that belonged to our grandpa. Whenever we had company over, he’d usually find some excuse to go hide somewhere. Same with family get togethers. Most of the time he’d only come out when it was time to eat or do chores or go to church, and even then, you could tell he didn’t really wanna be there.

But every now and then he’d come sit with us girls and tell us stories. Just things he made up while he was off by himself or stuff he got from books and kinda mixed together. He was always really good at that.

He was real smart in school, but he just never seemed to know what to do around other people. We weren’t in the same class so I didn’t see all of it, but I know he got picked on pretty bad. One kid apparently kept messing with him until my brother finally beat the crap out of him. After that the other kids mostly left him alone.

He was always nice to us though. If you asked him for help he’d help you. Sometimes he’d notice you were having trouble with something before you even asked and just come help.

I used to ask him for help with my homework all the time. He had so much patience with me, even when I was asking what were probably the dumbest questions ever. He could explain stuff so I actually understood it instead of just making me feel stupid for not knowing.

He moved away when he went to get his law degree and after that he didn’t come home much. The first time he came back he looked awful tired. He answered everybody’s questions and stuff but it seemed like he was mostly just doing it so people would leave him alone. Then he’d go off somewhere by himself.

The second time he came home he stayed for a whole week, but he rented a room in town instead of staying with us. We talked on the phone a few times after that but not about much. Then we kinda just lost touch.

I got married pretty young to my girlfriend and we ended up moving to the same town my brother lived in. So we started talking again and got pretty close like we were when we were kids.

By then he’d finished his law degree and was working for some refugee support group. He bought himself a pretty nice house just outside town. He started having these little meetups where refugees and people from around town could come hang out and get to know each other. He also teaches English to some of the refugees.

He had gotten really fit too. Like, ridiculously fit. I asked him what the heck he was doing and he said going to the gym helped him deal with the stress from work.

Then I had some money problems because of some health stuff. I told my brother about it and he just asked how much I needed. Then he transferred me the money right there.

It was over ten thousand dollars.

I was like, are you serious? And he just told me I could pay him back whenever I got around to it. I know he doesn’t make a ton of money, so I was pretty shocked and kept thanking him. He just shrugged and said something like it wasn’t like he had a girlfriend to spend it on.

And that was kinda the first time I started noticing how much he says stuff like that.

He’s always been the type to kinda drift away from conversations if he isn’t interested in them. He’ll still listen, but you can tell his mind is somewhere else until somebody says something that gets his full attention again. And if anybody starts talking about dating or romance, he gets this look on his face and usually tries to change the subject.

I asked him about it once and he just kinda shrugged. He looked really hurt and said, “Women just don’t like me like that.” I tried telling him that wasn’t true and cheering him up some, but he told me he really didn’t wanna talk about it.

And I don’t know what to do.

The thing is, I don’t even know how much of it is his own mindset because he really isn’t like that with anything else. If my brother decides he’s gonna get something done, he gets it done. He can be stubborn as a mule about it too.

I’ve seen him spend his lunch break tracking down city officials because somebody he was helping needed some paperwork. I’ve watched him talk to more than 30 people trying to find a babysitter for a single mom so she could take her English test.

That’s just how my brother is.He can be quiet and kinda strange sometimes, but if somebody needs help he’ll go all out for them.

I really don’t know what advice I’m supposed to give him or what he could do different. I know he isn’t the most social person, but he can talk to people just fine when he needs to. The only thing I can think of that might be a problem is he doesn’t have a driver’s license.

I don’t see him all the time so I’ve only seen him actually try to pick up a woman once. It was at one of those meetups he runs. I went along because I’d had a long day at work and just wanted to get out of the house.

I saw him talking to this really pretty Latina and they seemed to be having a good time talking. He got her laughing a few times and she kept touching his arm and chest while they talked.

I think he asked for her number, but she musta said no because afterward he looked pretty sad for a while. They kept talking for most of the rest of the night, but it wasn’t quite as flirty after that.

I know I’m probably biased because he’s my brother, but I really do think he’s got a lot going for him. He’s considerate and smart and giving. He’s creative. He can be really funny when he gets going. And he’s got more patience with people than just about anybody I know.

And I’m not into guys and he’s my brother, so I really don’t know how much my opinion counts here, but I would think some women would find him attractive. He kinda looks like a younger Mark Sheppard. I’ve tried talking to him about it but he just shuts me down.

I really think he’d be a good partner for somebody. He just seems to have such a hard time finding anybody.

There’s actually a woman I work with who I think might really like him, but I have no idea how I’d even try to set them up without making everything weird.

So I guess what I’m asking is, is there anything I can do to help him? Is there some way I could get him to open up about this without making him feel bad or embarrassed? And if I really do think I know somebody who might like him, how would I even go about introducing them?

I just hate seeing my brother hurting and feeling like I can’t do anything about it.

Thanks for reading all this.

Concerned Sister

So, for the record, I have been getting some seriously long letters from folks – like this one – and I’ve been editing them down as best I can. In this case, the majority of what I’ve cut have been more examples of how much CS’ brother is an awesome guy who’s incredibly generous with his time and effort, who excels at helping people in myriad ways, and apparently a Dungeon Master who enjoys running games in the Matt Mercer/ Brennan Lee Mulligan vein – running two separate campaigns for all-female gaming groups, including CS and her wife. So, CS, I think we can take it as given that your brother fucking rules, no insight check needed.

With all that in mind, we’re faced with the question of why does a guy, who seems to legitimately rock and resembles a charismatic beloved character actor, is struggling with dating and what you could do to help.

The first thing I think that is a factor is something that you don’t say: it sounds like your brother is neurodivergent, and I wonder if he’s ever gotten a formal diagnosis. There’re a few things in the way that you describe him that sound like he might be on the autism spectrum, and I think that’s having an effect on him.

(I also suspect that he’s something of an introvert who keeps exhausting himself by running down his social battery, but that’s a separate issue that’s more about resource management than anything else.)

One of the reasons why I’m a proponent of getting a formal diagnosis – or even a reasonable self-diagnosis – is that being able to apply the label explains a lot. I’ve spoken before about my own journey to getting diagnosed with ADHD in my 40s and how that suddenly gave me answers to “why am I like this?” and “why do I struggle with X, Y and Z when it seems like nobody else does.” Just the fact that you now have a name for what’s going on helps you realize that you’re not broken or defective; you have a medical condition that materially affects your life in these particular ways.

Knowing that makes it much easier to work with your condition, rather than exhausting yourself fighting against it. It also helps recontextualize the areas where you struggle so that you aren’t seeing them as an indictment of yourself as a person. This is going to be important because of how it ties into the second issue I see in your letter.

The second issue is something I regularly hammer in the column: it’s incredibly difficult to find love when you don’t love yourself. It’s not that not loving yourself makes you unloveable; it’s that it’s very hard to let people love you, to recognize it when it’s offered or to accept that it’s real, genuine and lasting. In a lot of men, this feeling that they’re inherently unwanted manifests in the belief that they need to earn the right to be loved – a variation on “men aren’t wanted, so they must be needed”. The problem, of course, is that the things that they do to “earn” being loved aren’t ever enough in their own mind. I suspect that if you pointed out how much your brother does for other people and how incredible that is, he would tell you that this is what he’s “supposed” to be doing… the inherent implication being that these things don’t “count”.

This can be incredibly frustrating for the people around him who want to help and support him. But it’s also a reminder of how much what can seem extraordinary to an outside observer can feel mundane to the person living it – a very “…to me, it was Tuesday” sort of situation.

The problem is that what you believe defines your reality. We all deal with confirmation bias, and that makes it all too easy to dismiss inconvenient facts that run counter to our held beliefs and over-emphasizing the ones that support it. It’s part of why your brother believes so firmly that women don’t like him “in that way”; a thousand signs that they do will barely counterbalance a singular rejection.

What makes it even worse is that this belief makes it hard to want to push back or challenge those beliefs. It hurts when you feel like there’s no hope for you, and that can make you want to withdraw from even the discussion of love or relationships because it feels like a reminder that it’s simply not an option for you, no matter how badly you want it. And avoidance only serves to make that anxiety worse; you go from avoiding the thing you’re anxious about or that hurts you to avoiding things that remind you of the things that hurt you. The world you allow yourself to occupy becomes increasingly small as you pull away from more and more connections, no matter how tenuous or tangential.

It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy born out of a self-perpetuating cycle; you try to break out of the cycle but you believe that it’s already nigh-impossible so you don’t try as hard as you could. You fail and thus confirm that it’s not possible, which increases the despair, which causes you to withdraw further, which demotivates you from giving it your all the next time you convince yourself to make the attempt.

And here’s the part that you’re not going to like, CS: you can’t fix this for him. Nobody can. We all want to believe that we can love someone enough to break through their defenses and self-limiting beliefs, and we can’t. We can help, we can encourage, we can support and we can suggest, but we can’t crack that wall for them, because that belief isn’t external to them. It’s internal and internally supported. When that first crack appears, we can help plant the seeds that will grow and force that crack to widen… but it’s still on them to make that crack in the first place. That belief came from within and so the change has to come from within as well.

Now that being said: your brother loves you and trusts you and that gives you influence, even if that belief works against your mutual goal. You can be a voice that encourages him to challenge those beliefs and to help point him in towards things that would support those challenges. This can include introducing him to people who might want to meet him… but I don’t know if that would work out quite as well as you might hope.

I would suggest that pointing him towards a therapist would be the most helpful. I would frame it as getting help with how he’s clearly feeling down or has things that bother him, not explicitly about changing his self-esteem, as he is less likely to push back.  “Hey, maybe this will help you feel a little less sad” is an easier lift than “You are objectively wrong about yourself and you should talk to someone about it.” Encouraging him to take the first step of talking to someone makes it easier for him to take the next step of “have you considered that this belief you hold isn’t correct?”

The same applies to the possibility of getting tested for neurodivergence; it’s easier for someone to hear “hey, this may give you some answers and ways of dealing with things” than just being told “bro, I’m pretty sure you’re X.”

If you do want to introduce him to someone – especially if he’s starting to reach a place where he can accept that he does fucking rock and women dig him for it – then I’d recommend doing it indirectly. Put him and your friend in a place where they can meet up without feeling like he’s being set up, such as inviting the two of them to a party and facilitating an introduction: “hey, you haven’t met my friend $CO_WORKER. $CO_WORKER, this is my brother.” You can even let your coworker know that he’s someone who needs to be hit over the head with a brick to know if someone’s interested, should it come to that. But at the end of the day, you can help point him in the right direction, but he has to be the one to choose to follow it.

I realize this is frustrating, and it makes you feel powerless to help someone who’s helped you so much. But you’re not helpless, and you are helping him. Being his friend, his confidant and the vice-president of his fan club is important; it reminds him that people love and care for him and want him to be happy and that it’s ok for him to have hope. It makes you a pillar of support that he can rely on, just as you’ve relied on him when you’ve needed it.

You can’t love him enough to change him or to fix him. But you can love him enough to make it easier for him to change when he’s ready, and to help him when he struggles with accepting those changes. That rocks pretty damn hard too.

All will be well.

I’m going to keep this short and sweet: what does it mean if someone says they’re open to either monogamy or polyamory? I’m poly, currently single and looking. I live in a sizable blue dot in the Midwest and while I’m starting to be involved with the in-person poly/ENM community, most of my dating has been via the apps. Even on apps like Feeld, I see people who say they’re open to either, and I don’t know how to take that. Is it worth my time to match with them, or am I just setting myself up for disappointment?

Both is Good?

I’m going to be honest, BiG, my opinion on this is a little cynical. I don’t think it’s a red flag or even necessarily a pink one, but I tend to look a little askance when someone has “open to poly or monogamy” in their profile. I tend to see it as being similar to “looking for short term, open to long” at best, and “I actually want one of these, but I won’t commit to that choice until the moment that someone calls the question” at worst.

The reason why I’m skeptical is that in my experience – both personally and professionally – being ENM or poly tends to be pretty all-encompassing; you don’t really find people who could take it or leave it. Certainly not in someone looking for a committed relationship.

At the same time, everyone who’s ENM or poly had to have their first experience and all the attendant growing pains; nobody’s born knowing How To Be Poly after all, any more than folks are born knowing How To Be Monogamous. So, I will freely admit that this could be unfair of me.

To me – and I want to emphasize that this is just my view – framing oneself as being open to both comes off as someone who is trying to cast as wide a net as possible and hoping to winnow things down later, or who sees the choice as being something they’ll make once they decide they’re serious about the relationship. The slight exceptions I could see to this would be either someone who is looking to explore non-monogamy but has little experience with it and is phrasing things awkwardly, or someone who’s willing to be monogamous for a while at the start of the relationship, in order to build up trust and communication with someone before opening things up later on. But even then, both of these can be a tricky line to walk and would be better to say that directly, rather than using unclear language or clicking two boxes on the app.  

Now whether this would be a bad idea for you to match with them is going to depend on what you’re looking for. If you’re not looking for a committed or serious relationship, or even particularly long-term, I don’t think it’s a dealbreaker per se. My advice would be that if you’re interested, then have a conversation about it before you move past the vibe-check meetup. Ask them about their style of ENM or polyamory, what experience they’ve had in the past, maybe what books they’ve read on the subject and what kind of relationship they’re ultimately looking for. That can help you get a better handle on where their head’s at and if the two of you mesh that way.

I would also suggest that you ask yourself whether you’re interested in being their guide to exploring poly/ENM, or if you’re at a point where you’d rather be with someone who’s experienced and knows the challenges that come with any open relationship. Neither of these is the wrong choice; it’s ultimately about what works for you.

If you know for a fact that you’re looking for something serious or long-term, then you should proceed with caution. As I said, I don’t think this is necessarily a red flag as much as a potential complication and you have to decide if you want to take the chance. If its someone that you otherwise vibe with and think it would be worth the risk, then go in with expectation that this is going to be an ongoing conversation.

Good luck.