I’m 31 and have essentially never had a girlfriend. I’ve had a pair of relationships that were very intimate (the first in the summer of 2002, and the second about a decade later), but we weren’t technically “dating.” I’m close friends with both women, and they recently met one another, but that’s another story. I also dated someone for a few weeks in 2000, and someone else for a couple of months in the winter of 2000-2001, but although we used the bf/gf labels, I don’t think those should count.
I can actually understand what went wrong, in the early years. I desperately wanted to be asexual. I’m a contrarian, often for its own sake, and I had decided I wanted to be one of those icy characters who doesn’t need all that sappy mushy emotional stuff. When, a few years after most of my peers, I realized that I was indeed heterosexual, I began to suffer from the dysthymia (chronic mild depression) that took away much of my youth. The two are probably connected, but I can’t be sure.
Some depressed people want to hurt themselves with substances or sharp objects. I decided to make myself hopeless in love. There were girls I knew might have been good for me, but instead I consciously developed frightful obsessions with a few (one in particular) who were utterly incompatible with me, and uninterested to boot. I concealed most of this from my parents, so I can’t blame them for not telling me to snap out of it. I was also too depressed to understand that I ought to dial back the eccentric behavior if I wanted a significant other (and/or many friends!) I lost whole school years to this madness.
I’m amazed that I survived high school and college due to the aforementioned depression that saw me become suicidal on a few occasions, and partially lose touch with reality and engage in some bizarre behavior on others. I graduated and went home, still depressed and underemployed, and spent a lot of time for about five years alone reading, going to concerts, and watching movies.
All things considered, I completely understand why I had almost no success in all that time. I have more details, but I’ll save them for now. Anyway, eventually I went to grad school in another city. I gradually became much less depressed, though I am once again in therapy, and recently (and for the first time) began taking antidepressant medication. I feel better, look better, act better, and in general I am much better, and yet I still (for the most part) cannot get a date. I guess I can understand why I had some difficulties, since I was adjusting to my new life and becoming un-depressed at the same time I was surrounded by brilliant, beautiful graduate school classmates.
Even so, I am not (and have never been) shy. Friends (I have problems there too, but I have some friends) say that there’s nothing wrong with me. I tried using OKCupid for a while, but got almost no responses and even fewer dates. I try to leave my house and do things I enjoy, but I don’t really enjoy much. Attempting to pick up women within activist circles is disgraceful, and causes serious problems. Despite all that, meeting women is not terribly difficult. The problem is, when I try to get close to them/communicate interest/ask them out, they reject me, with near-100% reliability.
There’s more, but I’m really drowsy.
