Question 25: How Do You Change The Responses You Have Been Getting From Life?

If you are a very anxious child and avoid developmentally important social interactions, you will tend to remain delayed in your social-emotional skillfulness. If, because of your social anxiety you cease to push yourself to interact and instead channel your energy into socially avoidant pursuits the problem becomes compounded. Not being a member of intimate relationships means you are cut off from important feedback such as how to dress appropriately or when it is not good form to wear a backpack. The true nerd will rationalize his or her odd social behavior, I think for defensive purposes. It is simply very painful to admit to yourself that you are essentially incompetent in this very important aspect of life.

The big lie that a nerd tells him or herself is that they will make a satisfying life for themselves based purely on their intellectual pursuits. For some minority of nerds, this may be possible, but I think for many others, the "life of the mind" becomes excruciatingly lonely after a while. The problem is though that by the time such people realize that they are in trouble, they don't know how to fix themselves. They are so very competent at what they do intellectually that they cannot stand the thought of having to go back to being an absolute beginner and trying to figure out how to be with other people. The whole idea of being an adult who is a virgin (or a relationship virgin anyway even if not a physical one) is deeply shameful and embarrassing and people tend to avoid dealing with what is deeply shameful and embarrassing. What happens is that they know there is a problem but when they try to deal with it, they get so painfully emotional and threatened that they become defensive and back off the project and retreat back to the ivory tower where they stay until the next time they get lonely. The other academicians around you sharing office space in the tower are by and large also nerds and also socially awkward and so they can't help much. They are good for mutually reinforcing the idea of how great it is to work on the chosen field, but they aren't good for intimacy. Too bad because intimacy is, for most people, ultimately what gives meaning to life.