Published on 12, July, 2020
Hello everyone.
I am a new user from California, USA. I just turned 30 in late October. Just a few months ago I found out that I had Asperger's. I have struggled immensely in the romance department, and despite wanting to, I have never had a girlfriend nor had sex up to this date. In my entire life, I have probably been on around 7-8 dates with women. All of them were just first dates with different women that never worked out. I am quite socially awkward, shy, timid, anxious and nervous.
In addition to Asperger's, I have had social anxiety, generalised anxiety, on and off depression depending on my life situation, hypochondria, plus moderate to severe OCD including pure O and ruminations. Perhaps this entire combination of problems has hindered my dating life.
I live in a place with a huge social stigma against people who are older virgins, especially male virgins. Being a virgin even at 18 or 19 is considered way too old and can be cause for beration and criticism from others. Imagine my case at age 30. I have been berated and made fun of for being single and a virgin since I was age 13. Every year was receiving endless comments about virgin loser this and that, why I have no girlfriend, why am I still single so old, why I am so weird, why am I so shy, why I am so awkward, etc.
My social awkwardness has especially hindered my interactions with women. I often say and do thing very clumsily and weird, which probably makes me look unattractive. I have very poor flirting skills despite having read some articles about how to do so. My social skills are poor. My only source of socialising is attending socials from meetup.com and InterNations. Most of the time, the events are poor, and I often meet people who are, in my view and in my experience, toxic, lacking empathy, self-centred, arrogant and judgemental. Right now I would say that I have zero friends in real life, and just perhaps one or two distant acquaintances from meetups.
I studied in various degrees in university, so between ages 18-27 I was busy studying hard. This meant that I had zero social and dating life. All I did was lock myself in the room and study night and day instead of going out with friends or dating women. I feel like I have missed the prime years of my life, as well as the opportunity to socialise with fellow students from my universities. I have three degrees in STEM fields: biology, mathematics and chemical engineering. In the future I plan to study medicine in Italy.
However, all of this academic stuff is moot--I feel like I have sacrificed my entire life to my studies, such that now at 30, I have no friends no girlfriend/wife. I feel alone and the multiple rejections plus negative comments that I have received from women about my being single and virgin at this age have affected my self-esteem. In the past couple of months, I have slowly but steadily been working on increasing my self-esteem and self-confidence. However, this Christmas made me fall a bit into a mini-depressive state. I spent Christmas alone, no friends no girlfriend, just me alone.
I feel like as time passes by, it is getting harder and harder for me to attract women. I have endless amounts of faults and negative traits, plus I often hear negative comments about how most women do not want a virgin and single guy who is this old with zero relationship/sexual experience. It feels really depressing to hear this.
My mother has Asperger's, plus was a virgin until age 27. She has a milder case than I do, but I notice that problems with romance, plus ASD, seem to run down my mother's side of the family. My late maternal grandfather most likely had Asperger's, and was a virgin until almost age 50. In fact, the reason that I probably had such an old grandfather was because he got married and had children so late in life. He was born before the end of the First World War.
I feel like I have a lot to offer as a potential boyfriend to any woman out there. I would like to think that I am not of low intelligence. I am brutally honest, which means that I am not one of those guys who is a pathological liar nor plays games. I am a caring person who is not arrogant nor self-centred. But still, I feel like these qualities are not really considered positive. Or if they are, that my many negative traits are seen as outweighing the positives.
This holiday season, especially with New Year this Wednesday, has made me feel a bit down about my situation. Every day I dream of the day that I finally meet some woman and I can finally be at least somewhat happy and not alone doing everything by myself. But that dream I have been having since I was 13 in 2002.
You aren't the only person in their thirties who has never had sex with another person, but I think the word 'virgin' is probably not helping. It has a lot of connotations that most people (autistic or not) would probably be better off without.
You can choose not to use 'virgin' to describe yourself if you want - just be really factual and use something like 'never been sexually active' if you ever have to say anything.
Perhaps you could also ask yourself how important sex really is? Because you sound like you're looking for companionship and a physical relationship isn't necessarily a part of that. Maybe don't look for dates; look for people who you share interests with, and find people you can get along well with. It might be that you can make closer relationships with other autistic people than with neurotypicals. I value my ND and NT friends but it was when I met the ND types (none of them diagnosed, some aren't autistic but would fit the Broader Autism Phenotype) that I really found people who I felt at home with.
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Well, a girlfriend which means both--compansionship plus physical relationship. Basically just about everything that is more or less commonplace in relationships.
Most people whom I meet are NT, so I suppose that perhaps that might be one of the problems. But from what I hear, most ASD people do not attend meetups/social gatherings, since they tend to be introverted. Introverts here, both ASD and neurotypical, tend to stay at home, so perhaps that might be why I very rarely meet any at meetups.
Unfortunately most of my friends have moved away from this city. Essentially I have zero friends, neither male nor female. I have perhaps one of two acquaintances from meetups, but distant ones at that. None are female. It has been hard making friends here, since most people have vastly different interests and personalities compared to me.
I think that the fact that I am socially awkward due to the various problems that I have probably makes it even harder. I very rarely talk about sex, even if others do so. I always have this "virgin" problem in the back of my mind that causes me a lot of sadness and despair, as if it were some sort of disease. Apart from the stigma itself, just the general feeling of missing out what most people do between ages 18-29 makes me feel like I have failed in life, at least on the social and dating fronts.
I guess what I was trying to say, though, was that you might find that approaching your problem of loneliness by talking about not having sex, and focusing on looking for a girlfriend so you can 'lose your virginity' is maybe not going to attract many women.
Do you have many female friends? Maybe just looking for a friendship, and then showing your positive qualities by being a good friend would improve how you feel about yourself (which will make you more attractive to any potential partner) and you never know what might develop or who you might meet through your friends.