Why have I never been in a relationship? Any help ?

11 comments

1. Have you tried approaching men?

   I’ll copy and paste my comment I made in another post someone made;

   Most men wait for the right moment to approach a woman. But the problem is we don’t know when that moment is. It’s so easy for a man to be labeled as a creep for approaching a woman- even more so if he’s unattractive. So, we just don’t do anything; especially with today’s cancel culture and with social media; look at the videos of men trying to help women at the gym and the try to blast him on TikTok for being a creep.

   Put yourself in those shoes and you’ll wonder why few men approach women

2. It’s not just looks.

   It’s a mix of thought process + conversations + value system match + chemistry + compatibility + future goals (for long term relationships) that need to feel and/or be aligned.

   Finding and building a relationship is a complex system and it requires constant work form both people.

3. Work on your confidence

4. Some thoughts, and hard ones at that but please know I say these things with concern for you:

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   You have a couple things working against you. You are approaching 30, and you have a promiscuous past. Each of those reduces the potential pool of guys that would want a serious long term relationship. The former because LTRs typically want to have children and your clock is running out, and the latter because LTRs typically don’t want a woman who gave the milk away to everybody else with no effort but now wants ME to pay the price to get it.

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   It’s not impossible. But it’s going to be harder, and only get more difficult with each passing year you inch closer to 40.

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   I’m not concerned with your looks. They are probably OK, and truth be told men that are interested in long term relationships don’t care nearly as much about looks as women think. Men who just want to bang you, or a trophy wife; they care about looks a lot. But men that want a serious relationship care more about other important things like attitude, pleasantness, matching of personality, matching of family goals. Just don’t be obese and sloppy, make a little effort to accentuate your strengths in the looks department and you’ll be more than attractive.

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   You just have to accept the reality that dating life for you at this stage is gonna be full of a lot of guys only looking at you as a piece of tail because of the 2 problems. Sucks, but it is what it is and the sooner we accept it we can face the challenge to overcome it.

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   Once you are past that, the first step to weeding out short term players looking for an easy score is keeping your legs closed. I’d say until marriage, but if you won’t be that serious then at least hold it off for a year. They’ll move along to easier targets.

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   Second is something I see a lot of in my family, and extended friends where women are concerned: are your valuations of yourself and the target men you are chasing in syncopation? A lot of girls complain about men that just want them for sex, while they are chasing guys that are higher on the value scale, much higher than them, and that’s why the guy only sees her value as a fucktoy. Are you being realistic about your own value, and are you willing to be dating men in that same value group? Because in general, women want to date UP and it’s only become magnified in the age of social media dating apps where women can find buttloads of “attention” (most of it just trying to get easy tail from girls at or below themselves) with ease.

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   I’m not saying to punch down. I’m not saying to settle for somebody below you or with glaring flaws. But if you aren’t a 9 or 10 yourself, it’s simply unrealistic to think you are going to be a top priority to wife up for some guy that’s in that upper 20%. If you are a 5, 6, or 7 I can 100% guarantee you there are guys in that range who would LOVE to get to know you.

   Dating people in your range is going to give you the chance to find one that’s not just viewing you as a warm hole. But it’s going to mean having to do the hard work of vetting while dating, and seeing which warts you are willing to accept and which ones you aren’t. We all have to settle in some areas of choosing our spouses, if we aren’t perfect Chads.

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   Thirdly, are you willing to be more forward and take the lead in asking men out? Assuming you have done away with chasing Chads and are now seriously looking at men in your value range, it still might be necessary for you to take the bull by the horns here.

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   It’s important to have a mindset change about what guys you are considering. So that you can actually have attraction to guys in your range. But you may have to start taking on the risks of asking them out, instead of waiting for them to take the lead. It’s not easy for women to do that, since they haven’t spent their life since 13 years old being shot down by romantic interests like men have.

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   And lastly, get involved in activities that interest you and have some social aspects. Great way to meet guys in a way that there is some other current goal than just dating.

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   GL with all sincerity.

5. There are several things that may be a problem. How do you approach men in general or where do you meet/find them.

   How fast do you get physical (if you are more easy leaning, men also talk and you might have a reputation that way, but that point is obviously an extreme worst case)?

   The most important, what I seek in a partner, is personality. Are you interesting, intelligent, humorous, passionate in hobbies, self-esteem, confidence etc.

   Future planning might also be a point, if you have more exotic thoughts in your future, like not wanting children, there are a lot of men who can’t handle that. But it seems that you are not coming that far in (pre) relationship or at what point do your relationship attempts fail?

   Edit: added something in last paragraph

6. Might need more context but for starters, the hookup culture has all but replaced the dating/relationship culture. Men in there 20’s (think top 15% which is who the majority of 20 year old woman are searching for) are just not as interested in actual relationships or commitments.

   These are likely the guys your meeting at parties and bars. The guys that do want actual relationships are generally ignored. That’s the unfortunate truth.

   To your post, it could be what your putting out there personality wise. Are you approachable? Or perhaps your just giving off the wrong signals. Without more context it’s difficult to say.

   To be honest your not the only one in this same situation. A recent study stated that by 2030 ( which isn’t far from now) showed that between 45 to 51% of all relationship aged women between the ages of 20 to 45 will remain single and possibly childless.

   Because of the disparity of dating, men of that same age group have resorted to looking outside their own countries to find romantic partners and wives. This easily can make the situation even worse for dating

   The point being it isn’t just you but multiple issues you might be facing all influencing the situation your in. Unfortunately, there may not be an easy fix.

7. Do you have friends & peer groups with the gender that you are attracted to? My partner & I knew each other and hung out with intersecting friend groups & social circles. We knew each other casually for years.

   After her BFF & my BFF started dating (a flash in the pan) we ended up hanging out more by proximity to our BFFs. At some point, she decided she was romantically attracted to me and “made a move” to signal this. At which point it made immediate romantic sense to me (I was pretty dense when it came to girls liking me – I never picked up on the hints & nonverbals & I had no idea what constituted flirting – so rather than assume that every girl that was nice to me or laughed at my jokes was into me like some kind of ego maniac, I just assumed I had no idea what was what & filed it all as friendly social behavior with no deeper meaning.)

   In the space of milliseconds, I was like, “Ohhh! I see. Awesome! Okay! Let’s do this!” And I looked at her and said are you sure you want to do this (hold hands and kiss and make out – admittedly pretty tame for college.)

   She answered by kissing me and we started dating, and dated for decades and are still dating as well as co-parenting and paying a mortgage and running a household by pooling our income & leveraging fiscal & social cooperation for mutual gain. And we even had a government wedding to get our families off our backs & to make parenting & home ownership easier as well as for any medical or chain of custody emergencies.

   Traditional thinking & codified concepts on relationships are a trap. Find people that bring you joy and accept you and want to celebrate you. You’ll find your person (mono)/ people (poly)

   To answer your question, you are 100% worthy of love. It starts with yourself. Well done on improving your health. I hope you are losing weight & getting in shape because you love yourself and not to make others love you.

   If someone doesn’t love you for who you are, they aren’t worthy of you.

   Also, there’s no rule that says you have to wait for someone to ask you out. If you like someone, ask them out. Start casual. Be chill. Learn to love yourself and people will be drawn to your confidence. It’s also easier to be genuinely generous and friendly when you love yourself. Everyone has insecurities – confidence is loving parts of yourself enough to take measured risk with other people.

   I remember thinking I was going to be alone for the rest of my life. And the fear and the misery that over came me. But also remember saying “fuck it, if I’m gonna be alone the rest of my life, I’ve got nothing to hide or to lose – I’m gonna be myself, I’m gonna do what I want – fuck these social expectations put on me.”

   Turns out being my flawed self is what attracted people to me when I was unafraid to be earnest, authentic, accepting & kind.

8. How attractive would a guy have to be for you to ask him out? Because that’s what guys are thinking when they are asking women out. I think alot of women think it’s easier for dudes to ask people out, but it’s not. It just expected. Like how women are expected to look nice. It’s not easier for women to look nice, it just expected.

   I see you say you had one night stand. I don’t know if you guy established that **both** of you guys want a relationship or not, so I can’t say much about that. Maybe you guys just worth compatible from his perspective. Maybe he just wanted to have sex. Maybe he thought you just wanted sex, too.

   A big thing about relationships is personality. I think alot of women bemoan that guys only go for look, but when a guy is around long enough to see your personality and nails, it’s because “he couldn’t handle you.” Don’t be that woman. You can be super cheery and some guys won’t like that. You can be cuttingly sarcastic and some guys won’t like that. The only important part is to be you. Because that’s who the guy is going to be in a relationship with. Your post didn’t speak much on your personality so (I’m not trying to be mean) that might be where we need to work on. Know who you are, what you want, and (a little suggestion from me) be proactive about your interest in guys. No coy “here’s a little sign of my interest that is vague enough for me to say I wasn’t interested if it turns out he’s not interested in me.” You can’t complain about nothing changing if you don’t change anything.

9. Find a guy you like and ask him out. Keep trying until you find someone who’s interested. You’ll learn a lot about yourself from the type of people that are attracted to you

10. Neither have I. I’m 23. But it was by choice. I avoid relationships like a disease. We are not missing out on anything. If anything we are saving ourselves from lots of unnecessary drama and stress.

11. I’m definitely no expert as I haven’t had a relationship either for longer than you have, but to me the lack of confidence is something that seems like a large part of the issue. When interacting with women (or people in general) I highly prefer the confident ones. And then there is also the fact that you mentioned you’re desperate. Those two factors might result in attracting a certain type of guy who is only interested in sex because he thinks it’s going to be easy to get.

    While I realize it’s easier said than done, I would recommend spending some time not trying to find a relationship and just learn to accept and love yourself for who you are. Personally I’ve always believed you can’t be in a happy and lasting relationship if you aren’t happy on your own. After all, you might start depending on the other person for your happiness and get stuck in a bad or even toxic relationship because of it. This can’t happen if you are happy being on your own.