How Do I Hold On And Not Give In To Despair?

Estimated reading time: 17 minutes

Hi Dr. NerdLove,

I’ve messaged before and been a different alias here. I’m uh, messaging again because I find myself in this existential break point of whether or not it’s even possible to find love for someone like me who hasn’t really had much at 28. I currently disregard myself from it because I struggle with self-hate and while I’m trying to combat that (therapy, writing about it, etc.), it doesn’t feel like it’s enough, so I stay away from active attempts partially because of that but also, partially because I’m isolated and don’t know how or where to even go to meet someone.

I’m on the apps but they feel difficult for my demographic (I’m one of the lowest ranking ones on the male side according to studies that may or may not be bullshit) but regardless of difficult, I feel like it’s slot machines even though I’m genuinely being myself and sounding like a real human man as opposed to ChatGPT (I do bespoke comments and/or jokes if they mention liking funny).

I think I’m fighting hard to not give into despair about trying to find love/anything in the year 2025 but it’s hard and so, hence the message. Maybe your blog response here will push me to another island of thought.

Drowning In The Sea of Darkness

It’s absolutely possible for you to find love, Drowning. But I think you touched on what you need at the top of your letter: you need to make finding love for yourself a higher priority than trying to find someone to love. I don’t think you have to give up on dating, necessarily, but I think you should recognize that it should be a much lesser concern than taking care of yourself and getting yourself to a good place.

There’re a lot of reasons why I keep hammering on Ru Paul’s quote that “if you can’t love yourself, how in the hell are you gonna love somebody else?” but one of the biggest is that it’s hard to give that love to someone or receive it back when you don’t have any for yourself. You’re trying to pour from an empty cup, and you won’t trust others when they try to pour into yours – why would you, when you don’t understand how they aren’t seeing how awful you supposedly are? At best, you’re starting a timer that’s counting down until you push them away because you don’t deserve to be happy. At worst… well, at worst is when you punish them for trying to love you, because you’re afraid of feeling hope.

Learning to love yourself increases your ability to love others, because you have more to give and more to offer. You can see your own value and understand how to bring value to others. Being able to give that love to others ultimately brings more back to you, simply because love isn’t a zero-sum game; it multiplies the more you share it. It may not always return in the ways you expect, but it does come back. So in a very real way, learning to love yourself makes it much easier to find the love you’re looking for from others.

The key to learning to love yourself is two-fold, and it’s deceptively simple. It’s not just a matter of stopping yourself from hating yourself; it’s a matter of increasing the love you feel as well. It’s a bit like driving a car; taking your foot off the brake may let the car roll forward, but you have to push down on the accelerator to actually make it go.

Right now, you’re doing a lot of the work to take your foot off the brake, and I’m proud of you for the work you’ve been putting in. Going to therapy and journaling are all great steps, and you absolutely should keep going with those. But it needs to be combined with increasing your love for yourself while minimizing the things that get in the way of feeling it.

This is one reason why I think it would be in your best interest to get off the apps for now. I’ve ranted before about the way that dating apps have changed for the worse, and that still applies, but I think the bigger issue isn’t the apps as much as how they make you feel. Using the apps to meet people means that you’re opening yourself up to far more rejection – both explicitly from folks saying “thank you but I’m not interested” but also implicitly from silence and a lack of matches. That can fuck with people’s heads when they’re in a good place. When they’re in a bad place in their lives, it can be ruinous, because it’s so, so fucking easy to take it personally. Even when it isn’t.

You say up front that you’re part of a target demographic that does poorly on the apps; I’m sure you can see how the mindset you currently have would make you feel so much worse. When you already hate yourself, it’s incredibly easy to take things like silence as a referendum on you as a person and turn something as simple as your ethnicity as yet another mark against you and why you’re supposedly worthless. It may not be true, but that doesn’t stop it from hurting, nor does that understanding stop it from stabbing you in your most vulnerable spots with tiny knives. Even needles can do significant damage if you get stabbed with them enough times and in the right spots.

So turning off the tap of incoming despair – in this case, putting the apps aside for now – is important. It’s like trying to put out a fire while someone keeps running around throwing lit matches at new piles of dry brush. You don’t need to add yet another source of negative reinforcement while you’re on this journey. But note that this isn’t the same as giving up on dating; it’s just a matter of recognizing now is not the right time to be using this tool.

But like I said: you don’t want to just remove the hate, you want to increase the love, and that requires more effort and thought on your part, because it’s going to require a diversity of effort.

Treating yourself well is an important part of it. You want to do things that not only make you feel good but remind you that you deserve good things and to feel good about yourself. This isn’t just about looking at yourself in the mirror and repeating affirmations and compliments – though I do recommend this. It’s also about taking care of yourself, making sure you eat a balanced and nutritious diet, drinking plenty of water, getting sunshine and regular exercise. It means keeping your place clean, maintaining your grooming and hygiene and living like you actually give a damn about yourself. Think of it like a zookeeper taking care of a majestic tiger; they need a clean and hygienic enclosure, plenty of active enrichment and nutritious food to be happy and healthy.

But the other part is to do things that bring love and goodness to others as well. Part of why self-hate is such an easy trap to fall into is because it’s self-maintaining. All you have to do is… nothing. If you think you’re not just worthless but a net negative to others, you’re more incentivized to isolate yourself. Better to hide yourself away from the world than to make it worse for others, and hiding yourself away only serves to convince you that there’s nothing you can do. It reinforces your sense of helplessness and hopelessness.

So I would recommend finding ways to help others, bring more joy to the world and to make the world even a little better. Volunteering your time is a perfect option for this, whether it’s working to help build a community garden, visiting elderly people who might be isolated and hungry, working at an animal shelter or taking shifts at the food bank or local soup kitchen. By looking for ways to help others, you’re showing that you’re not a drain on the world. Quite the opposite: your actions are making life better for people, in small but concrete ways. It’s a reminder that, no matter what feelings you’re experiencing about yourself, that you are improving the world for people through your presence and your actions.

Remember what I said about how putting love out into the world sends love back to you? This is part of how it works. Taking care of animals in the shelter and helping them find their forever homes, helping other people feel less isolated and lonely, even just making sure underserved and underprivileged people get access to resources and help they need are acts of love. It’s not gratitude that brings the love back, it’s just seeing how you increased the love and joy in the world by pushing back the darkness that does it. Knowing that you were able to make someone’s life a little better, their community a little safer or more secure? That reminds you that maybe you’re not as awful or worthless as you think. It means that there are people in the world who will be thankful that you are here, because of the way you’ve affected them. Just as those little needles can cause harm when you pile enough of them together, those little moments of grace and add up fast, too.

Oh, there’s also a bonus to this: it forces you out of your isolation and out into the world. Volunteering is a team sport; it requires many people to come and work together towards a worthy goal, and there’s nothing that unites people quite having a goal that you’re striving for as one. It puts you in contact, not just with the folks you’re helping, but your fellow helpers, people who are going to see you doing your best to be your best and to bring more light to the world. That’s going to encourage them to see the good in you, just as you’re having to admit that it’s there too. That’s going to reinforce that sense of self-love; you’ll not only see it for yourself, but you’ll also see it through their eyes too, just as they’ll see their own value and worth through yours.

And let me tell you: on those long, dark nights of the soul, when it’s 3 AM and your inner demons have come out to dance and scream and remind you of all the things you think make you worthless, being able to look at the work you’ve done and the hope you’ve brought to others pushes back. The yellow radiance of fear and despair can’t hold out against the blue flames of hope. That hope and kindness kindles love and that love spreads.   

In helping others, you help yourself. In spreading love, you increase love, including for yourself. And by giving love away, you increase your capacity for it and your ability to receive it when it comes back to you – and it always will.

That’s the kind of love that’s going to make it much easier and less frustrating to find the romantic love you’re hoping for. In fact, as you make progress on this journey, you may be surprised that it finds you, when you least expected it and in ways you never anticipated.

Give yourself permission to put the search for love from others aside for the moment and focus on building that love for yourself. I promise you: it will make everything else possible and open up chances and opportunities that you can’t see now.

Even in the blackest of nights, hope always shines bright. Spread some hope for others and you’ll find it for yourself too.

All will be well.

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Dear Dr. NerdLove,

I’m a 36 year old man and I’ve been divorced for two months. My wife and I had been married for ten years and together since we were eighteen when we both had to agree that our relationship was over. The divorce was as drama-free and harmonious as you could want; it was a mutual divorce and there wasn’t a lot to do besides sign the paperwork and call it a day. We were and are still friendly, even as we had to admit that we didn’t love each other the way we needed to. All of our friends have been incredibly supportive and even remarked at how this was a model for how a divorce should go.

Since the first time we actually mentioned the divorce word, I was sad and a little resigned but I knew it was the right decision for both of us. I’ve told my friends that I wasn’t happy about it but I was ok.

Doctor, I’m not ok. I’ve been hanging on by my fingernails and losing my grip.

Now in the last month, my ex-wife has moved across the country for work (which was something we both knew was coming, even before we went to the lawyers) and I’m in a spiral. It’s not that I want my ex-wife back – I’m happy for her and she’s going to be much happier on the west coast than she ever was here. It’s that her leaving was apparently the last thing holding me together and now I’m freaking out.

I haven’t left my apartment for days. I feel completely lost and confused and I don’t know what I should do. The idea of getting back on the dating scene is leaving me terrified beyond my capacity for rational thought. I haven’t been single for nearly half my life! I don’t know how to be single or how to be on my own. At least when my ex was still in the same city as me, I felt like I had a semblance of normalcy but now I feel like I’m clutching to a twig in white water rapids and heading for a waterfall. What’s wrong with me? Why am I not ok like I should be? What do I do?

Please help.

On My Own

You’re ok, OMO. What you’re experiencing is entirely understandable and normal; part of why you feel like you’re spiraling is because you think you shouldn’t be feeling this. But that doesn’t make any sense; your world just came to an end, of course you should be feeling it! Yeah, the end may have been as gentle as you could hope for, but it still ended. That’s going to fuck with you and thinking it shouldn’t is madness.

Buddy, you were with someone for eighteen years. That’s half of the time you’ve spent on this planet where you haven’t been just one person, you’ve been one half of a gestalt entity that was your marriage. And then suddenly, that being fell apart, and now not only are you an individual again, but your other half is gone. If you were ok, then that would be the sign that something was wrong. That would be the sign that you stopped caring long ago, that you were never really forming that being that was both you and your wife, that you weren’t forming a whole that was greater than the sum of its parts. The fact that you’re hurting is the sign of just how much you cared and how much it all meant to you.

It was easier to pretend when your ex-wife was still nearby, even after the divorce. Now she’s completely gone, and you’re seeing the negative space where she used to be.

It’s ok to not be ok. It’s ok that this is fucking with you. It’s ok that you’re feeling lost and confused and scared and twisted up. It’s ok to feel all of this and you should feel it.

But it’s important to recognize this for what it is. Yes, you had your world and your world ended. But the fact that the world ended doesn’t mean that this was the end. Worlds end all the time, but in that ending, a new world is born. You’re experiencing the shock of the new, the terror of the unfamiliar and the confusion of who you are and what your purpose is.

Consider that for the last 18 years, you have shaped your life around another person being there with you. Every decision you’ve made, every day you’ve experienced, every future you built were all built around the two of you. Now, suddenly, there’s just you, like before you merged your life with your ex-wife. But it’s not like before, because you aren’t who you were back then just as you aren’t who you were when you were married. You don’t know who you are now, because you only just got introduced to yourself. That’s why you’re freaking out; you’re still thinking like who you used to be and not seeing who you are now.

And that’s ok! This is all incredibly new and incredibly fresh. You’re still reeling from everything that’s happened, and two months is not enough time to get used to it. Honestly, even saying that it’s been two months is misleading; this didn’t truly begin until your wife was well and truly gone – not just from the marriage, but from your home, your city, your state. You need to give yourself a lot more grace and compassion because it just happened.

This is all normal. This is all completely understandable. You’re ok. You’re only just realizing how much has changed and change is scary.

The first thing I want you to do is reach out to your friends. Your friends almost certainly took you at your word that you were ok, and even if they suspect you may not be, they aren’t going to know that you need them until you tell them you do. Reconnecting with your friends and spending time with them is going to do a lot for helping you feel like you’ve got your feet under you and you’re standing on solid ground again. It’ll help bring normalcy back and remind you that you’re not alone – even though half of you is gone.

You don’t have to do much; just spend time with them. Feel the warmth of their presence, allow yourself to lean into them and just appreciate them. Let yourself laugh if you feel it, and let yourself cry if you need to let it out. The tears may outnumber the laughter at first, but that will change in time, as their love and affection will bring you strength and peace.

The second thing I want you to do is put dating aside. It’s not just that you’ve fully accepted your divorce, you haven’t even started the mourning process. It is way too soon to even think about dating; you don’t even know who you are yet! Dating right now isn’t about love, it’s about the fact that you’re still feeling this massive hole and you’re feeling an entirely understandable impulse to make that hole go away by shoving someone else into it. But that’s not going to fix it, because nobody will actually fit in that hole and despair and loss will seep in through the little nooks and crevices like rising damp. The hole needs to close on its own, and it can only do that as you work towards learning who you are now.

The third thing I want you to do is to focus on yourself. You need to heal and you need gentleness. What are the things that feed your soul, the things that make you glad to be alive? What is there that feels like the warmth of a sunrise against your skin and the smells like a spring breeze in your nostrils? These are the things you should be indulging, to soothe the pains and remind you that there’s still good in the world. These are the things that will remind you that you’re still alive and life is for the living, not for the walking wounded and the living dead. Focusing on these things will help ease the pain, clean the wounds and soothe the aches.

Give yourself permission to focus on yourself for a little while. You’re allowed to be a little self-centered and a little tender. You’re allowed to rest and recover instead of rushing back out into the fray. Like an athlete who’s suffered a critical injury, it does you no good to try to get back in the game when you aren’t healed. At best, you just prolong the time it’ll take to recover. At worst, you’ll only hurt yourself worse.

But I want you to understand: there will be days when you feel better, followed by days when the world comes crashing in on you like an avalanche. But as these days pass, there will come a day when you realize that you don’t feel so bad. You may only notice it by what you don’t feel – that pain that you’ve gotten so used to that you only notice it in its absence.  

When – not if, when – that day comes… well, that’s when you’ll be ready to start the process of dipping a toe back into dating and finding love again. And while I know it’s going to feel unfamiliar and intimidating, there’s nothing to fear. In the 18 years you were with your wife, you built a lifetime of experience. You’ve faced every conceivable scenario with her, allowed someone to see you in your most vulnerable and ugly moments and knew they still loved you anyway. You’ve had triumphs and failures and you came out better for it all. You have nothing to be afraid of, because you’ve seen it all and done it all and you know what you’re capable of. When the time comes, it will feel strange to do this again, with new people, and there will be times that it feels too intense or too frightening… but you’ve come through before. The person may be different but you know what you’re capable of because you’ve been there before, and you’ll be able to navigate it.

Sure, the new people will respond differently – some positively, and some negatively. But that’s ok too; this is how you’ll learn who’s right for you and who isn’t. You’ll learn who is someone to pass on, and who might be the person you will want to build with. And with time, the unfamiliar and frightening will become the known and you’ll recognize the territory much sooner and much more efficiently and stride across with that much more confidence.

But that is the future. For now, there is healing, there is mercy and there is the search for your peace. What you’re feeling isn’t pain, it’s enlightenment. You’re a new person now, with the benefit and wisdom of what you’ve earned before, stepping into a new world. It’ll take time to get used to it and to map out its territories, but you will get there.

You’re going to be ok. I promise.

All will be well.