Dating as a Nerd and Finding Friends

 This is a very personal blog entry for me. I know the title alone will illicit certain reactions and assumptions. This is not a internet rant about a man feeling entitled to women or blaming the black community for not being accepted. This is my personal experience and I feel there's a lot of people that are dismissive about nerds' feelings on this subject. At my ripe old age I have never dated before and haven't had any friends since I graduated college back in 2014. In my childhood finding friends was fine, but it was in my high school years when it was really hard. I had only one real friend in those years and he had dropped out at one point so I was alone most of the time. There were some other people I did speak to but since I can't remember their names I don't think I should call them friends. Entering community college I was pretty much alone there. My high school friend surprisingly showed up, but again he had run off to chase some girl up in Maine so I was alone again, but when I transferred to a four-year university I made several friends, but most of them were not good. They were very racist, misogynistic, and didn't treat me well so after I graduated I stopped talking to them.

I've seen my peers engage in romantic activities since I was six years old. A girl I had a crush on back then I remember her seeing her kiss this other boy with dreadlocks by the water fountain back then. I recall someone in the fourth grade saying he wanted to ask this girl out in my class and I constantly heard about sex in middle school and high school, I did dance with a girl in my middle school dance, but she wasn't anyone that I knew very well. We did attend the same school and I think she was in my class, but I never got the chance to talk to her a lot in school let alone outside of school. High school was where I genuinely saw couples, but that was never the avenue for me. People at the bottom of the social pole had a hard time in that space. While this was the time where I might've been the most engaged in my passion for writing fantasy, playing video games, Yu-Gi-Oh! and watching anime the people who bullied me didn't even know I was really into those things. I was born with a disability and anyone can tell by looking at me and that made me a target for bullies in school. Though I wasn't necessarily bullied for being a nerd most of the time I do emphasize with people who were. I've seen it happen to others too and I know how much it can affect their adulthood. At this time my cousins also attended high school with me and I remember one of had a boyfriend but she tried to hide it from me as when I saw them together she quickly let go of his hand when she saw me.

In these years while there were many girls I did find attractive I never really approached them and some of them turned out to be bullies. I do recall one pretending like she wanted to hang out with me until she humiliated me in front of a group of people. Because of my experiences in high school I never really sought out to talk to any of these girls because of how I was treated. It never occurred in my mind that they would even talk to me and on the rare occasion that I did say something it was small and it seemed like the girl didn't really want to be bothered anyway, which was surprising that in my senior year a girl did talk to me one day when I was alone in the hallway. I was pretty depressed back then and said some depressing stuff, but that didn't deter her because she kept talking to me and I believe I got her number. I recall her running into me at graduation when I was with my family and my aunt took my picture with her. That girl also offered to take me home that day and she also mentioned something about a party that everyone was going to and when I said I didn't know about the party she quickly shut the conversation down as if she made a mistake mentioning it. I never heard from her again. The closest was my cousin pretending to call me as her from another phone as a joke.

 During my time at community college I really didn't attempt to talk to any there either. There were a couple I remember I thought were attractive, but one turned out to already be in a relationship and I never saw her again after that class and the other person turned out to be related to me. When I transferred to a four year college that's when I really made the attempt to talk to girls, but none of those went anywhere. I got stood up or ghosted most of the time. There were three girls I guess I could consider my friends. One of those girls was in my main friend group, but something she said to me one time around the others made it seem like she didn't really consider me a friend which is why I don't talk to her anymore just like my male friends in college and the other two girls who were I hung out with when my main friends were busy or just didn't feel like going out. One of those girls I did like but I waited too late like right before we graduated to tell her that and she said she doesn't do long distance relationships. There was also someone that was part of a mentorship program that I very much felt like she liked me. She laughed a lot towards what I said when I wasn't trying to be funny. Most of the time I feel like people are making fun of me in that situation, but not from her. She said I had a dry sense of humor and she liked that and asked if my older brother was like me and I said he's definitely not. I drew a portrait for her and she ended up becoming a teacher at the school and eventually at another university. A part of me felt like I missed out on an opportunity there. There was also another time when I was just chilling outside of the campus cafeteria when a man approached me and told me his homegirl thought I was cute and he asked me how old I was. I was twenty-four at the time and told him. He said "damn, you're old and told me he thought I was a freshman and that's probably too much for his friend." I admit I did say "fuck" too myself after that and when I told one of my friends he said "you might have to start lying about your age." I never did that of course but part of me wonders what would've happened if I did.

In my last semester I stayed in one of the nicest dorms, it was practically an apartment. I had an RA on the floor and she was very cute. By that time I felt I was fed up with talking to girls, but I got a reading from her that she liked me. I couldn't confirm that really until I had graduated. I was pretty bored and unemployed when I graduated and I did miss the college environment so there were days when I went back to campus to hang out and I ran into my old RA. She seemed excited to see me and invited me to go to a MLK event on campus that night. Since I didn't have a car and public transportation in my city was shitty I declined and after that I never saw her again. Part of me wished what would've happened if I did stay. I'm pretty sure my mother would have picked me up if I did call her and told her I was stranded.

There were a couple more instances like that happened before I moved out of my hometown and moved to a major city but I don't think there that relevant to the point I'm making. When I finally made it away from my home state and into a new area where absolutely no one knew me I thought things would be better. Initially I was only concerned with finding a job and a place to stay but eventually I did want friends and to date but my luck was no better than back home, it actually might have been worse. As I mentioned there were a few times where it seemed like people had interest in me, but they either vanished, I waited too late, or told them I was unemployed. There have only been a couple of instances when girls approached me first which shocked me but both times I declined because they were underage. None of that happened here. I met people when I moved up here. I spoke to guys and girls but to be honest at first I talked to way more women than men but the results seemed to be mostly the same. The men I tried to befriend said they were either busy all the time or they were busy with their girlfriends and I got tired of that same response all the time so I eventually stopped messaging them and they never reached out to me. The women I never really even got that far with. Most of them never responded to my texts and a lot of people now prefer exchanging Instagrams instead of numbers and a lot of times I think people just want to increase their follower number than to talk to you.

I was never rude to any of these people or demanded anything from them. I genuinely missed having friends like I did back in college. Funnily enough one of them came into my job one day and I told him to call me sometime but like I thought he didn't really care about me as he never hit me up since then. At that point I already had stopped talking to him and the others, but I felt that friend feeling again when I ran into him at my job and got my hopes up. In between this time I did ask other guys on a video game forum about my issues with dating and that's where the problems with people's assumptions come from with male nerds. I got comments like "wash your ass" or "nerds don't have any style" or "your problem is nerds only go for the really hot girls that are out of their league" and things like that. Things might have changed with how popular anime has become but the depiction of how male nerds were in dating was always negative. There was the hashtag "forever alone" on Twitter and in television and movies nerds were depicted as undateable and virgins. This was also the situation online too as I recall mentioning one time when I was at a store and I heard a customer say her last name was Blade which reminded me of Sonya Blade and I made a joke about it and a response I immediately got was something like "I bet that got you some pussy," which was sarcastic of course and I wasn't even trying to hit on the lady anyway. There are so many instances where I see things like this. I still see it sometimes to this day as I watched a video last year about geek conventions and the man in it said they used to be for people who never had sex in high school. A lot of things like that you'd see aimed at male nerds specifically. There was also the gamer phrase of if you're a virgin until you're thirty you will become a wizard. I know female nerds have had different forms of bullying, most of it was gatekeeping, but none of it really was aimed at them being undesirable for just being into nerdy stuff.

 Back home I didn't meet many women that were nerds like me. I could really only think of two, but once I moved to a major city I ran into them all the time. One of the other assumptions people have is that I don't leave the house. I do get that as a lot of nerds I've talked to in person and online don't leave the house but I was never that way. When I was in high school and post college I didn't have a choice but to stay in the house as I didn't have a good way to get around but when I moved to the big city that was less of a problem but still there were and still is only a few places where I meet people with similar interests as me. I frequent geek conventions; that includes anime conventions, gaming conventions, sci-fi conventions, and comic book conventions. If it's nerdy I'm into it. There are a lot of people that go to these and after the pandemic there are more than ever going. The problem is the people that attend these really don't seem like they want to make more friends. There are people I've known for years in the cosplay and con community, but I never talk to them outside of cons and there are some that I even hung out with at cons and yet I still don't know their real names. Just recently I had invited 5 different people to go to the movies with to see Battle Royale and not a single person replied. I also meet other nerds at cosplay parties and I also like going to concerts and attend goth nights, but it's the same case with most of those people too. It got so bad for me when it was around my 30th birthday I seriously considered committing suicide as I didn't want to be labeled with the wizard status and it genuinely seemed like no one cared about me. A few years later though I did meet a couple people who I did get to hang out with but it didn't seem like with either girl I had much in common with so we ended up stop hanging out and eventually talking. Neither of them I met at cosplay parties or cons, but one of them I met at a concert. With her it just revealed that we had nothing in common other than being into r&b and neo soul.

I still tried to meet people in other ways too but the results were the same. A few I did end up hanging out with but they vanished too and there was a time last year that I genuinely thought I was going to get a girlfriend. I did meet a girl at Katsucon last year at night. She was really nice and we had a lot in common and she didn't judge me when I divulged to her that I never dated before which I never told anyone other than a therapist and my family. It was nice. We hung out both Friday night and Saturday night of the con. She even told me some really personal stuff that she never told her friends. I think she might've been drunk in that situation, but on Sunday when the con ended I talked to her and she said she wouldn't mind dating and after she left I never heard from her again. I texted her but never got a response. I was pretty messed up after that. Sometimes I'm also hesitant because back when I was on social media regularly I often saw women say that they don't want men talking to them. I don't blame them because I know men in the world have done horrible things to women and not make them feel safe, but yeah that contributes to why sometimes I do feel hesitant to approach women.

I just feel so lonely and alienated. I have severely limited my social media use because of this. It was too much. I feel like I can't relate to common experiences that most people have. I'm well over thirty and haven't had a friend since I was twenty-four and still never dated or had sex. I genuinely miss having someone to hang out with and I miss having people to play video games with. The only time I play video games with other people is with strangers at a con or a cosplay party and that's it. I would also like to experience intimacy in my life. It just seems like a struggle. I grew up seeing other nerdy men struggle with the same thing as me online, but we're always criticized and made fun of for it and every male nerd who expresses their feelings on it isn't red pill or an incel. I also see quite often the argument of you need to get over being bullied which is weird. There are other traumatic experiences people dealt with that don't get disregarded like that but when it comes to nerds being bullied that's a common thing that's brought up. I find it weird especially now when people in the cosplay community are saying post COVID that the people who used to bully us for watching anime are now going to cons for example that incident at Dreamcon two years ago and I've had my own experiences as well with people at cons who made fun of people for being nerds. I was discussing this with someone I met on the train the other day about this actually. I just don't understand if there's something wrong with me. I genuinely don't get it when I see horrible people that have girlfriends, spouses, and children all the time. My friends were assholes as I mentioned but they didn't have trouble with it. I don't know, but I do wish when it comes to discussing it that there are more nuance to it and not just immediately going off one of those points. I want friendship and love like everyone else.