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.
I have had OCD about AIDS since I was a child. Despite being born in 1989, I remember seeing the older footage about AIDS in news and documentaries from the early and mid 1980s. I had a certain fear of sex due to STIs like AIDS, but I still wanted to have it, naturally.
It depends on if one is miserable solely due to the relationship or not. Being in a relationship might help for those who have mental issues and their partner can offer support. But obviously if the relationship itself is the problem, that is another case.
My grandfather did not find a wife until almost age 50. This was in the 1950s, so if he were alive he would be over 100 years old now. I surely hope that I do not end up like him, waiting until almost I am 50. I try to increase my self-esteem and stuff, but I would be lying if I did not say that every day is a struggle. The feeling of missing out on enjoying life with relationships and stuff in my 20s is hard to fathom when I ruminate about it. Perhaps I have a Pure O obsession with this single/virgin issue. The loneliness and sentiment of missing out, however, is soul-crushing.
Well, firstly, you can only catch HIV if there is an exchange of bodily fluids, and then, it's only blood or semen. Secondly, if your grandfather died before you were born, information you receive about him will have been from your grandmother or whichever parent of yours he parented. As he was born during World War One, some of his twenties may have been interrupted by the Second World War, so he might have been in his late 20s before he was demobbed, and he may have decided to be part of BCOF or he may have even gone to Korea. Also, you don't know what sort of a man your grandfather was before he married your grandmother. He might have been a man who wasn't interested in losing his virginity, for all you know.