Female, 48, never been in a real romance relationship. With anybody non-fictional that is.
Went out with a guy a couple of times. A finger chewer. My fingers. Never went out again.
Well, as of this week, I’m employed. I’m working on the interesting hobbies and close friends bits. I’ve had an OKCupid profile since 2008, but now I’m actually using it. Things are looking better.
Gosh, so many people with so little self esteem.
Invisible Chimp, best of luck. I think you are underselling yourself. No one is born sexually expert, and (trust me) you don’t have to be anything special to meet many great women if that is your choice. Just don’t try and be something you aren’t.
… aromatic in what way, one wonders?
I selected none because I assume it had to involve actual sex in addition to the relationship. I can’t seem to do both at the same time 
Wow, a lot can change in two months. When this poll was made, I voted that I’d never been in a relationship. Now I have been. I mean, am. 
Well, a thread titled “How many have never had a relationship” is kind of a natural place for us to congregate.
I’ve never been in a relationship with anyone I truly loved. How’s that?
Wow, I must admit I’m a bit shocked at how many people there are who haven’t been in a relationship. I live in the UK and I don’t know anyone over the age of 20 who hasn’t had sex or not had a boyfriend/girlfriend. But I guess it makes sense there are people out there who prefer to be alone, just like there are people out there who hate it.
As for me, many long term relationships in the past (I’m 43), been divorced once, and getting married again next year. I guess a lack of fussiness, I find pretty much all girls attractive in some way, and a very strong desire not to be alone have shaped my life quite a bit.
For those of you who are alone and who don’t want to be I say don’t give up, you never know when you’ll meet someone you can get along with. Joining a dating site on the internet, after my divorce and diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis, was the best thing I’ve done in a long time.
This is kind of a tautology, isn’t it? People who are poor at romantic relationships tend to be poor at interpersonal relationships in general (including friendships), so they’d be unlikely to be friends with you. And unless someone is an avowed and self-secure asexual (or is just openly anti-relationship), after a certain age (30ish) they start to avoid every relationship and think something about them is “broken.” By then, most people have either tried and failed many times, or they’re too afraid to ever get to the “trying” phase.
Things can change, even for the most unlikely of people. I didn’t have my first real romantic relationship until I was 29. When I was 27, I was so far behind my peers in that area that I was sure I would never catch up. But I was wrong.
Hey, I find most women attractive and don’t want to be alone either, and that hasn’t helped me find relationships. In fact, I think it’s more of a liability: lack of fussiness = desperation = would settle with anyone, so why would I feel “special” if they want to be with me = not attractive. And I have gone out with women whom I didn’t find especially attractive at first, because they were available to me, which in my personal experience isn’t something that happens often (or at all, generally speaking) and I can say that after you’ve had sex with someone, their attractiveness to you increases by orders of magnitude. I think it’s your brain’s way of justifying what happened. 
Anyway, I’m 29 and I’ve had two relationships in my whole life. At this age I should be at least at five if not closer to ten. And I don’t expect it will ever happen again. It’s not that women dislike me or anything, but they barely even see me as a man, as a sexual being. Yes, as discussed in the “pick-up artist” threads, there are things I could do to force them to see me as such, which would be bound to get me some hits, but I think I prefer being myself.
I wonder how many people who have never been in a relationship have ‘nice guy’ syndrome. I can definitely envision a guy who has never been in a relationship act more and more subtly toward the opposite sex the longer he is single, to the point that women don’t interpret his actions as interest/affection and instead see someone acting merely friendly. Then, when he comes to the realization she only likes him as a ‘friend’, he is hurt/jaded and it makes the problem even worse.
Also, regarding introverts and people who say, “I don’t want to talk about how my day is going” it shows a lack of empathy toward others and its not surprising some of them say they are terrible at ‘picking up on signals’ or 'just dont “get” dating". To pick up on signals/know what to do, you have to pay attention to people. Not just pretty women, everybody around you. Introverts spend most of their energy paying attention to themselves, rather than other people. They perceive things like small talk exhausting and pointless because they’re not willing to step outside their bubble and actually try paying attention to other people.
People who are extroverts, particularly people who are very sociable/have lots of friends tend to engage others. Rather than talk about themselves, they ask questions about the people around them. Rather than talk/act in a way they are always used to/comfortable with they tailor their speech/vocabulary/body language in a way that engages the people around them. People who 'Wear a lot of Hats" tend to be individuals who are confident in stepping outside their comfort zone to engage other people. These folks tend to not only have a lot of friends, but their friends tend to cross a lot of spectrums of culture/hobbies/demographics. Introverts can have friends, but often they are facsmilies of themselves, which makes them easier to relate to.
To say a relationship is work in a negative association is kind of missing the point, in my opinion. To me, a relationship is like a job you like that pays well. Yes, you have to ‘work’ to make it work, but the work is fun and rewarding. To associate it as an unpleasant, tedious chore is to suggest its not worth the effort.
For people who have never been in a relationship but want to be, I think the key above all else is confidence. I know this is kind of a chicken-and-the-egg problem, “How can I be confident when I don’t know how to be confient/never been?” and I think the solution to that is to find a way to both be happy with yourself and step outside your comfort zone regularly in life.
If it means anything to you, I’ve had lots of relationships but I don’t think there is any ‘right’ number of relationships to have. The woman I’m marrying was only in two relationships, counting me, and I was her first and only sexual partner.
You can have a lot of relationships and make the same stupid mistakes over and over again (like I did in my twenties) or you could have one or two really amazing relationships (like my fiancee did) in the same timespan.
Besides which, do people know all the details of their friends’ relationship history? Among friends I’ve made in the past several years, when the subject of my dry spell comes up, they’re always surprised; just seem to assume that I must have but it never occurs to them to ask.
I was rather the opposite. I was tired of being dismissed so I decided to do something grand enough that it couldn’t possibly be interpreted as just friendship. I gave a woman flowers on Valentine’s Day and invited her to a play. She said yes.
Then asked if I could get an extra ticket so she could bring a date.
:eek: That’s pretty fucked up, but I’m wondering if there’s more to this- How long did you know the woman? Something I learned through experience is that Valentine’s day is a weird day dating-wise; not only is it easy to Try Too Hard any other day of the year, but V-day is a really easy day for this to happen. Maybe it was too much too soon for her, and the extra ticket thing was a blunt way of her showing she wasn’t interested.
In my own experience a lot of women I dated had a hard time flat-out saying, "No thanks, not interested 
" and would do the ‘simply ignore him until he stops calling’ or the ‘hey could we bring a “friend” along’ (similar to your story).
You bring up a good point, that you are definitely letting your intentions known, but probably trying a little too hard sometimes- there’s this sweet spot between trying too hard and not trying at all. What helped me is to think of someone selling me something- Do I want someone from Hoover banging on my door, shoving a vacuum cleaner in my arms, throwing dirt all over the carpet and insisting its the greatest vacuum cleaner ever and I gottagotta buy it? Am I doing that to the lady I really like who I’d like to date again?
With flowers/V day I had the best experience with people I had been seeing for some time, where it was already established they like the romantic notions of the sexual organs of plants and sitting in a dark room watching people gesticulate for 3 hours with the remote hope of the evening ending in sexual intercourse 
I don’t know if I’m a nice guy (probably not) but I just don’t know how to flirt. I know how to be friendly, which is what I usually do when I’m with people. But showing someone that 1) you’re a sexual being and 2) you’re sexually interested in them requires something else.
It’s not exactly as you’re making it to be. When I interact with people, I can sometimes get a relatively good idea of how they’re feeling/what they’re thinking, but picking up on romantic signals is something else. I suppose it may be a confidence issue: if you’re not expecting to get romantic signals, because you cannot believe anyone could be interested in you, you’re not going to pick up on them.
And here I think you’re doing the classic extrovert’s self-congratulatory dance. I’ve always considered myself introverted, even though the few psychological tests I’ve passed tended to show me as middle-of-the-road or perhaps even slightly extroverted. What this means isn’t that I’m not sociable, or don’t want to interact with people, or live in my own bubble. I like people, and I’m quite sociable. But at the end of the day, when I’m exhausted, I want to be alone to relax and do my own things, while an extrovert (or at least someone more extroverted than I) wants to be with people to relax.
There seems to be this idea that it’s somehow “wrong” to be introverted, that it’s a personality flaw that one should work on, rather than a personal characteristic. Sure, it’s a good idea to learn to be more sociable and to understand others better, but this has nothing to do with introversion or extroversion. If you want to spend your week-end alone reading a book, don’t force yourself to go to a discotheque to dance until the wee hours of the morning, because that’s just what normal people do dammit and you should learn to be more extroverted. Accept that there’s nothing wrong with the person that you are.
I should probably learn to be happy with myself, but I’m a perfectionist and am never really satisfied with whatever I do. OTOH I’ve put myself outside of my comfort zone quite often in my life. Perhaps it gets a little easier each time, but it’s still hard.
For a woman it’s probably not a big issue in our culture. For a man it may very well be. At 29 years old, with two relationships (a year-long one and one that lasted eight months), a potential partner might very well find that strange and off-putting. (Just read the multiple threads about “at what age is never having been in a relationship weird and a sign of serious problems and a deal-breaker?”) Although I’d agree it’d probably be worse if I’d truly never been in a relationship.
We worked at the same company, but not the same department. Knew her for a couple months, and we’d been out once or twice on friend-type stuff, lunch or going to a museum.
And we are cross-country friends still; e-mail or chat once every couple months. (Don’t know if that makes it more or less fucked up.) I asked her about it some time after the fact and she swears she had no idea I was expressing any romantic interest.
No. Introverts find small talk exhausting because it fucking is exhausting. Introversion is not a choice or a lifestyle. It’s a fundamental outlook on humanity. Introverts were “born this way.” They’re not selfish or flawed or inferior to extroverts.
Educate yourself before you take another ignorant shit on introverts… particularly here. You know how you (probably) get all happy and charged up talking to people? That’s how an introvert feels when they’re by themselves. You know how you start to feel restless and antsy when you’re by yourself for too long? That’s how an introvert feels when they’re around people.
Well I wouldn’t say I was particularly attractive or seen as a sexy man by women, but I’ve found making friends with females can lead to more after a fair period of time, as long as you are the kind of person who listens and smiles, and is there to help if help is needed. No dating techniques have been required apart from just being a nice person. I realize that being a nice person probably means less sex than being the sexy, slightly pushy person, but in theory it should help you to find that nice partner, and perhaps like yourself more than the serial sex getters.
I also agree that the veneer of desperation is a turn off, but that’s why making friends without thinking about dating and just spending time with the opposite gender, if that’s the way you swing, can make all the difference.