On Long Dry Spells and/or Virgins

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Inspired by this thread. Would any of the “winners” of that thread care to share why it’s been so long, or why you are still a virgin?

Me… as I said in the other thread, I’m 38 years old, and haven’t been laid since I was 19. I haven’t even kissed a woman since then.

To start with, I’m a shy person, and introverted. I prefer to spend time with people one-on-one (if at all); small groups are okay, if I know everyone involved. I’ve never liked large groups, and definitely not crowds. So doing things like going to parties or hanging around bars and such has never appealed to me.

I met my first real girlfriend a couple of months after graduating from high school (1989). We were together for almost two years. During that time we were like rabbits, so I’ve had sex hundreds of times… but not since we broke up, going on 19 years ago. She’s the only person I’ve ever had sex with.

After we’d been together for more than a year, she began to express concern (and rightly so) about the amount of beer I drank, which became one of the factors in my eventual decision to break it off with her. Looking back on it, I think I chose alcohol over her, though I certainly didn’t see it that way at the time.

On any given night, more often than not I would drink a 12 pack of beer; by the time I turned 21, and could get alcohol anywhere anytime, it was every night. And being a solitary person, drinking was a mostly solitary activity. For many years, I wasn’t interested in doing anything else after work every day but going home and getting drunk.

I sobered up about four and a half years ago, a month before my 34th birthday. Then there was that first year of “finding myself”, where they say not to get involved with anyone. That leaves the last three and a half years… what’s my excuse for that time span? :slight_smile:

Well… there’s the whole being shy/introverted thing. On top of that, I’ve been in school all that time, and working a lame part time job; I’ve found most women my age aren’t really into that kind of thing. They’d rather have someone who is established in their career and life. Go figure.

I suppose I could go hunting for the express purpose of getting laid, but at this point I don’t want to do that. If I’m going to break my streak, it’s going to be with someone who means something to me. I would love nothing more than to meet someone and have a relationship, but at the same time the idea of it scares me to death. I fear that sharing this story with a potential mate would make her think I’m a complete freak… and my total lack of experience in even kissing, let alone sex, would be beyond embarrassing.

I have tried the online thing, and had a few correspondences, one of which even got to the point that we met in person. Once. I figure whatever is meant to be will be… but it’d be nice if it happened sooner rather than later. :slight_smile:

So that’s my story… anyone else?

2

Me?

My first relationship started when I was 21, we moved in together almost immediately, and had a “normal” sexual relation, the girl had serious mental problems which grew worse and worse before becoming manageable, at that time we both came to the conclusion that our relation had changed from lovers to caregiver/depended…and that I was holding her back (she came to this conclusion before me) and the relation ended.

I was 27 and I fell in to a dark place,

About six months later I started a relationship with a girl from my work, sex was great but I had to many commitment and depression issues to make it work, so that didn’t last long.

After that I moved to a different city and started a new life,

I have done the Internet dating thing for the last six years, I average about 3 first dates every 2 months, but not a lot of second dates and not one case of “getting lucky”, maybe I ‘m somehow signalling damaged goods or something, I don’t think I’m ugly, anti- social or anything but somehow it never works out, lots of “you are a very nice guy but not what I am looking for right now”, I still have contact with most of the girls I dated and most of them find the Long term relationship they were looking for on the date after ours……Yay for them….I like writing girls, and I love the fantasying part I do between choosing to write the girl and actually meeting her, the actually dates are usually nice……I know a lot of great first date spots in Maastricht, but there was never “chemistry”…so

I am now 36.
So I am not celibate by choice, but maybe somehow I am sabotaging stuff so I don’t have to leave my comfortable low intensity depression zone.

I recently started taking Anti-depressants maybe they will help

Oh side note……I have kept “a just in case” condom in my wallet since January 2000, :slight_smile:

English is not my first language, I am dyslectic and had no time to proofread

3

I’ve mentioned in several places that I’m simply asexual, and I was going to stop mentioning it because people might get tired of hearing me say it. But since you ask… I’m simply not interested.

If I did have normal hormonal responses, I would still wait until marriage for religious reasons. But as my psyche is now, that’s all hypothetical.

4

I take it that the condom is not the SAME condom thats been there for nearly 10 years?

I dont know what the shelf/wallet life of condoms, but its pretty darn short if I recall correctly. Replace that sucker frequently. Particularly if you want it to actually work.

I’ve had some absurdly long spells myself. And for me it wasnt that I wasnt getting regular sex at regular intervals that was so aggravating. Its that I wasnt GETTING ANY AT ALL for long intervals.

A couple year low spell wouldnta been so bad. A couple year NO spell was irritating as hell.

5

No I replace them regularly, especially since keeping in them in my wallet seems to squish them, I never buy them, but I go to a lot of festivals where they hand them out like candy

6

Well, here’s another topic I never thought I would be discussing on a public message board…

I am a 49 year old female virgin. Never thought I would end up in this place in life…

I started out normally enough; in high school I had a couple of regular boyfriends, and we did our share of heavy duty making out, including oral. I just didn’t feel ready to ‘go all the way’.

I broke up with my steady late in my Junior year. My parents were VERY overprotective and I really wasn’t allowed any freedom; it had been hard enough getting privacy with my old boyfriends, who had worked hard to win my folks’ trust, but after this, they tightened the reins.

Fast forward: I began gaining weight. A lot of weight. No man would look at me in ‘that’ way anymore. I have found that almost without fail, men want their women wrapped up in a pretty little package. As I got more lonely, I gained more weight, It was an ugly, visious cycle without end.

I had male friends. One, I had romantic feelings for. I asked him to come to a weekend dog show with me (I was in my 20’s at that time. He looked horrified, told me he didn’t have those feelings for me and stopped speaking to me.

It’s been a hard life. More than anything, I would love to know what it’s like to be loved, to make love. I have tried dating sites, and find nothing but jerks. You have no idea what ‘lonely’ feels like until you’ve walked in my shoes. I have no family left alive, no close friends. No significant other.

I have normal sexual needs, and have to find creative ways to take care of them. I snuggle up to my pillow or to my dog at night and wish it was a man.

I wish it was different. I wish someone could look beyond the exterior and see that I have so much love to give. But it’s been so long, I honestly don’t even know how to act around the opposite sex now. I am very shy and have lost a lot of trust in men.

So there you have it. Go ahead and laugh. It won’t be the first time and I’m sure it won’t be the last. I am beyond the point of caring anymore. I just thought that maybe by telling my story, I might help someone to look at an overweight woman differently, somewhere, someday.

7

PapSett, that was a post that makes me post this, for reasons I can’t describe except to say thank you.

If someone asked me one year ago where I’d be, I’d have no clue.

A year ago, I left a job unsuited for me (took a chance for once with a new job). I thought I could never make it back to my career field in this economy, not to mention the salary requirement.

Flash forward to now. I am working a job making the same money, but with none of the responsibility.

A year ago I felt depressed; no crushed that I would never find work again doing what I was good at.

I landed a job after only a millisecond of looking (talk about luck).

The point being that life can change so quickly.

A year ago I wanted a girl I went to school with (she declined my 2 attempts to ask her out). One day last winter, she asked me out!

We had a beautiful relationship.

It is so amazing that life can seem so closed and decided; yet it is in fact not decided at all.

Again, my point being that we have no idea what is around the corner. I really am in awe of this past year of mine. I achieved everything I thought I could not. Partly I took chances, partly I got lucky. I am still amazed. Never think it can’t happen (as corny as that sounds). Love is around every corner, I am growing sure of it.

8

I’m not old enough to be a “winner” from the other thread (but give it a few more years), however I suspect my reasons are similar to some of theirs.

Simply put, the whole interpersonal relationship thing has always just completely eluded me. I guess I assumed that if you were patient enough, eventually you’d find yourself in situations leading to kissing, dating, sex, and relationships. But as I approach 30 without ever experiencing any of those things, I’ve long since realized that there is a level of communication going on that is completely alien to me. I now know that other people go to a great deal of effort, a lot of it subconsciously I suspect, to create those situations for themselves.

So while I know what the problem is, I’m as baffled as ever as to what can be done about it. It’s as though during interactions with people there is someone holding up a sign with directions about what to say and do that everyone but me can read.

I have managed to make a couple good friends over the years, not that I could explain how it happened. I don’t have any desire for a large number of friends, but at least it gives me some hope that a relationship might be possible. Unfortunately, I think age itself will become a new barrier as I get older. Being inexperienced at 18 is much different than being inexperienced at 38, as far as your partner’s expectations go. So I’m also starting to feel like if I can’t make anything happen in the next few years, I’ll be so far behind the curve that even if I do find someone who might be right for me, I won’t be able to overcome all the initial difficulties.

I suppose I’m luckier than some people at least. I do generally enjoy being by myself, though I can’t say I’ve ever really experienced the alternative.

9

Snort

I just got this mental image of willthekittensurvive: He’s all excited because he’s about to get laid. He reaches for his condom, opens it up and then a cloud of dust comes billowing out.

:smiley:

please take this with the humor it was intended willthekittensurvive

10

That sounds about like my situation. The mystery to me isn’t what I’m doing wrong, it’s what the hell are the rest of you doing right. And it’s probably about as difficult to explain.

I have several female friends who mean the world to me; they’re all convinced that there’s someone perfect for me, but that it isn’t them. I’ve gotten the "friends " speech, or worse, several times. The nice-guy threads usually lead to a debate about whether they’re (we’re?) self-entitled jerks in disguise, so I tend not to participate.

It’s not that I’m particularly shy. I can talk to anybody once I get started, but it’s a bit like peeling a hard-boiled egg; once you’ve got that first crack to start with, it’s easy. And I do prefer a smaller group to a large one. I went to a mega-dopefest in NYC several years ago, and I just couldn’t find an opening into any conversation. When the group left the restaurant for a bar, I slipped away and went back to my hotel, and lie in bed staring at the ceiling for most of the night.

I’ve tried online, as well. I’ve got profiles on a couple of sites, but don’t do very much with them.

11

I don’t want to advertise, but I really want to help Robot Arm and Diz: there is so much information out there for people like you. There are websites, books, even TV Shows

As for me, a 24 year old intentional virgin (for religious reasons), I found I didn’t really want them to. Sex isn’t my goal: a relationship is. And I don’t want to have to change myself for it to work. But it sounds like you two do.

I still want to stress that you will have to find a way to take the good stuff, as some of it can be morally questionable.

And, as much as I’m loathe to make Internet diagnoses–you guys sound like you might have some Asperger’s Syndrome traits. Especially the one about not grasping social cues. The good thing is you can still learn them–people with Asperger’s have to learn them like someone else might “learn to play the piano.”

Good luck, you guys!

12

There’s several issues for me:

  1. I’m somewhat in a catch-22 situation. I would enjoy going out to do stuff around town with someone, but going out and doing stuff around town by myself doesn’t seem real thrilling, especially if it’s merely a “sly” sort of excuse to meet people, which just seems dishonest. I’d just feel sleazy going to cooking classes or whatever and be hitting on girls. They came to cook, not get hit on. The only place I could be sure that they’re probably looking to get hit on is at a bar, but I don’t like bars or clubs. Hanging out at a bar or club doesn’t seem all that enjoyable even if I did have a date.

  2. I lived in Japan for several years and was working from 8am to midnight every day for that period.

  3. I now live in Seattle where nearly everyone is terribly liberal and doesn’t feel it necessary to stay all that fit and trim, so there just aren’t a lot of women that I see around town that look even decent let alone like someone I would want to approach. And of course, I think their politics are silly.

  4. Online dating is terribly imbalanced against men. It takes months of religiously messaging pretty much every woman who registers to get a response, let alone if you have fairly specific tastes which are highly uncommon in your area and especially online. Internet people tend to be more likely to be overweight and more likely to be off-kilter.

  5. I’ve now actually met a girl that I like in England, which is…frickin England! That ain’t close! She isn’t sure she wants to meet someone from so far away and that she only knows from the internet. And while I’d be happy to get a job in England and move there, I don’t think I want to do that until I’ve at least met her once. Of course I might be better just to move because I sure ain’t doing well in Seattle.

13

If you’d asked me a few months ago, I’d likely have gone on for several pages of various theories. As things stand, I’ve had some eye-opening moments of late, and I can equate it to two things: One, I don’t have a lot of sex appeal. Two, the last relationship I was in had such a messy break-up that it made me tremendously gunshy about trusting people of the opposite sex when it comes to more than just friendship. I think the later helped bolster the former, and now that I know about both, I’m trying to repair them. Probably a long road, but journey of a thousand miles yadda yadda.

14

As I’ve gotten older I have found it more and more difficult to meet new people. Since I’m not really a bar-scene kind of guy any more, I’m not even sure where to go to meet women.

15

I wasn’t one of the “winners” but I’m going to weigh in anyway. I was a late bloomer – a virgin until age 25 (but have had a very normal love life in the 30 years since). I didn’t keep my virginity that long by choice – in fact, all through high school and college I was desperate to lose it. But I wanted it to be with someone I cared about. And I was stuck in a pattern of low self-esteem and fear of rejection. So I would never just be up front about being attracted to someone… instead I would make friends with them in the hope that it would develop into something else, and it never did. (And possibly the women I cared enough about were smart enough to realize that with my combination of low self-esteem, neediness, etc., getting involved with me in that way would not end well.) Finally, one day I said, “FTS, I’m going to ask somebody out on a date.” And it worked. Gee… who would have thought that asking someone out on a date would lead to sex? :smack:

Of course it did not always go smoothly. My first few relationships were marked by what I call the “fourth date problem”… i.e., I was still so low in confidence that I would be coming home from the fourth date, still not having tried for a kiss, saying to myself, “GEEZ! I can’t believe I didn’t make a move!!” Fortunately for me, the women I was dating were patient.

16

I’m married. And my pregnant wife is not feeling very comfortable with herself right now.

So, siiiiiiiigh.

17

28 y.o. here. I ultimately don’t need sex, although I would like to have a lover, and would enjoy it a lot. I’m Catholic and actually try to adhere to the rules and principles, so I don’t go looking for cheap lays. On the other end of it, while I would be fine getting married, I’m back at school so it’s not really an option. Plus, I date only rarely. I’ve had only two girlfriends (but one of them twice). Sure, I’ve had a first kiss (and she was a great kisser: I thought my mouth was exploding!) But I’m a little unusual and don’t know how to put myself forward. I have no way to tell if any girl would be interested. Frankly, I really doubt any of them are.

Finally, while I do ask a number of women out, I also get the feeling a lot of girls around here are really not interested. They’re very business-focused (I’m in business school) and seem to think that even casual dating is a waste of time or something. Or maybe they just don’t like me. if there is a girl I like, I try to talk a bit and see if they seem like someone I would want as a friend first. Only then do I ask and get shot down.

18

When I was twelve, I told people I would never get married. They’d chuckle knowingly and say, “Oh just wait. You’ll change your mind.”

Now I’m 47, never married, and still a virgin. The reasons are many and varied.

  1. A strict religious upbringing.

  2. A fair amount of social isolation due to said strict religious upbringing.

  3. A fair amount of female subjugation involved in strict religious upbringing.

  4. I did not want children. Still don’t.

  5. Years of ostracism from the kids at school.

  6. Years of sexual harrassment from the boys at school once puberty hit us.

  7. My own observation from those around me that a happy family was a damned rare phenomenon.

  8. My own family was a miserable experience.

  9. I view abortion as I do adulterous affairs. I believe both should be legal and a matter of choice. However, as a matter of morality, one should never actually have one.

  10. Since all contraceptives have a failure rate, there’s a certain risk of pregnancy in any long-term sexual relationship. As per my abortion views, I would feel compelled to carry the child to term, and then surrender it for adoption. A major pain in the ass. (Granted, at 47, the risk is somewhat less. But I haven’t passed menopause, and now there are all sorts of possible medical problems about a pregnancy to consider.)

  11. I’ve never been in love. Never even close. At least, with anyone who actually existed.

Do I regret anything about my solitude? Hard to say. I have battled depression all these years, but since that started at the age of thirteen, I would’ve had that regardless of my love life.

I think that I’ve avoided a lot of problems that other people have. I worry a little about my old age, but hell, maybe I’ll be lucky and die young.

19

20, virgin. Same reasons everyone else said: It’s because I fail at talking to strangers (and everyone’s a stranger 'til you meet them), can’t make any sort of small talk, plus getting high and wacking it in my room is more fun then going to a party and standing in the corner not talking or making eye contact with anyone. But it could be worse; I have friends that I hang out and do stuff with, which is a big improvement from last year.

A lot more women in this thread than I expected. These virginity threads are usually a total sausagefest. You know, if anybody’s going to central Pennsylvania anytime soon . . . :cool:

Or maybe it’s because my attempts at flirting come out creepier than I’d like them to.

20

Buwh? You’re a virgin? Really? Wow.

Well, I hope I’m remembering you correctly, but if I am, I’m just really shocked. I’m surprised you thought you couldn’t find a conversation. I remember you just hanging out with everybody.

I guess you’ve just disproved the notion that all elderly virgins are hideous losers with no social skills whatsoever.