I’m 26, and for various reasons –– mainly living with controlling and infantilizing parents for way too long –– I’ve never dated before. Kissed, held hands, dates, sex…nothing.
I’m doing a lot of inner work to shed my upbringing, widen my social circle, and focus on building my own happy life. After wanting love for a long time, pursuing relationships has peacefully gone on the back burner. (Watching women deal with men’s antics from the sidelines and my own brief encounters has motivated that.)
I thought having literally 0% romantic experience at 26 was always a minus for me. But maybe it’s a good thing?
If I don’t end up dating or having sex until 30, it might have me skip over an entire decade of immature men and traumatizing heartbreaks to arrive me to an age group of men (30s+) who have grown up, are now seeking more, and can give me healthy relationships.
Am I right or am I off?
TL;DR I haven’t dated yet (I’m 26), and I’m wondering if I should wait until I’m 30.
10 comments
However you want it.
It could work how you’re imagining it. Or it could be that you hit 30 and date some losers.
You are putting all the pressure on the men. Men do not become magically more mature at 30. We just stop caring about others opinions about us at that time. We really double down on ourselves. If we collect Lego sets at 29 we are going to dedicate an entire room to legos at 30. I turn 32 next month. In two days I’m going to a trading card convention.
You will have the benefit of not having past baggage from relationships. That will be a plus to some men. But you will not have gone through the trials and tribulations to know what you want, and that will put off others. The same men who value inexperience can find it in a 23 year old.
There’s pros and cons, no right no wrong. There is no short cut to finding a good partner. Just stay the course and own your decisions.
Every age has it’s dating problems. I don’t think you should wait hoping it will get “better”. The problems are just different…
– In your 20s, there’s lots of people who aren’t serious yet.
– In your 30s, the dating group shrinks a bit as people are marrying the people they’ve been dating. You also have the cohort of people who aren’t ready to settle down yet so they either still play games or want to date younger to buy them time.
– In your 40s, the divorce wave starts happening. People often have tons of baggage. There’s a group of newly divorced that want to party because maybe they missed out in their 20s. Oh! And the cheaters. SO many married people playing the field.
Not sure about the 50s yet. Maybe someone else can chime in – but I’m sure there’s problems there too.
You will always have to filter through the “junk” of online dating… the problems just change a bit.
You’re doing some massive generalisation here. There are decent men and less than decent men at every age.
You just need to do what’s right for you. If you don’t want to date yet, that’s fine. You don’t need to justify it to anyone.
I think people in their 30s are not easier to date (bagages, trauma, emotionally unavailable,…). But I guess you will be more aware of red flags and what type of person you want to date. I have a girl friend who is getting married to her first bf (she met him at 28 ). Good Luck!
Honestly, overall I think it’ll make dating harder. A lot of dating is practice – you’re learning your parameters, how to enforce boundaries, what your sexual preferences and style are, how to spot toxicity, and how to have a healthy, ongoing dialogue with a partner. If you wait until you’re 30 you’re still going to have to learn all those things. And in the meanwhile, you’ll be missing out on possible connections that will have settled down by the time you reach 30.
More superficially, you don’t even know if you like the way holding hands or cuddling feels; and making out is a skill you can develop with practice. And most dates are at least somewhat awkward; learning how to get past that awkwardness in order to have an interesting interaction with the other person is a huge, and for most people difficult, skill with lots of upside.
​
But!
>I’m doing a lot of inner work to shed my upbringing, widen my social circle, and focus on building my own happy life. After wanting love for a long time, pursuing relationships has peacefully gone on the back burner.
This sounds really healthy. And your self, your own happy life, should be your priority. At some point as an adult you have to learn to sit at a restaurant by yourself without feeling uncomfortable. And in any relationships you do choose to pursue should be in service of that.
​
There are also aromantic, asexual, and demisexual people. Like most sexuality stuff, this is on something of a spectrum and it’s not something that has to stay the same for a person forever. It’s also something that people often don’t realize about themselves, and think something is wrong with them (like people who don’t realize they are trans or gay until well after all their friends do). Maybe this applies to you, maybe it doesn’t, but it’s okay either way and I think looking into it could help your whole self-reflection process.
​
I guess at the end of the day, my advice is this: take it as it comes. You don’t have to actively pursue dates or hop on Tinder, you also don’t have to say no to every person you meet before some arbitrary timeline. You don’t have to willfully miss out on interesting opportunities in order to avoid the worst of the online and bar scene dating grinds.
I think waiting till 30 could be beneficial for sure. Especially if you’re still dealing w/ the aftermath of your upbringing, that’s gonna take some time to work through. It’ll give you more time to focus on yourself an figure out what kind of relationship you want before throwing yourself into the dating pool. Plus, you’ll have had more life experience so you’ll know better what kind of guy is worth your time n effort. Good luck!
In short, no. When you have 0 dating experience, you often put up with a lot of shit you’d normally never tolerate because you don’t really know if it’s normal or you’re overreacting.
You can get your heart broken at any age, shitty men and women exist in all age categories.
No. Dating is like anything else, it gets easier with practice. Any aspect of it you can think of, you will get better at the more you do it.
Honestly you’re not going to magically find the perfect guy the first time you date somebody, you’re going to have to deal with assholes, heartbreak, just plain incompatible people who you thought were good. Some people will start out great and get worse, some will start kinda bad and get better, sometimes you realize you don’t actually want what you thought you wanted.
Learning to navigate all that takes practice and experience, and the sooner you start the sooner you can get good enough to find the right person for you.
It’s excellent you’ve been focusing on yourself (:
But no, waiting until you are 30 to date will not make things easier for you. It will definitely make things a lot harder! Dating takes practice, and it takes time, so it’s better to start now. Mistakes and heartbreaks you miss out on in your 20s will simply become mistakes and heartbreaks in your 30s instead. Men are not necessarily better partners in their 30s, and you will not have the experience to be a Wise Girlfriend either. Also, the pool is definitely smaller in your 30s and it can be more difficult to meet people generally.
I know it’s tempting to put off something you’re scared of. But that is never the best way to approach life!