What's the point?

[ostrack]

Hey All,

 

I'm a 24 year old (almost 25) male here, and I have a problem I've been trying to solve for a while now.

The short version of the story goes like this: I dated someone who I believed was the love of my life between the ages of 18 and 22, basically a three and a half year relationship. It was not only my first serious and long-term relationship, but my first relationship, period (I didn't date at all in highschool, and mostly just pined after this one person who I ended up dating and falling in love with). For her, it was her first serious relationship. We each provided each other's first sexual experiences. Things fell apart in time, at least from her perspective, when college ended, and the relationship was over; it was NOT a mutual or agreeable breakup, and the person I spent my life with for so long, who was my best friend in the world, somehow learned to hate me in a very short amount of time. Sparing some of the details behind the actual dissolution of the relationship, the reality is, the whole thing shattered anything resembling self-esteem in me, and I haven't gotten it back in the couple years since.

 

The thing is, immediately after everything ended, she moved back to our hometown and flourished. She began sleeping with pretty much everybody in sight, and started cranking through relationship after relationship, and she was happy; immensely happy without me in her life in any capacity. On my side, I went back home to help take care of my father, who was ill with leukemia. I wasn't in a place where dating was really feasible, or in an emotional state where I could even consider it.

Time went on, I moved away after some months, but I never "got back on the horse." I've made no organized attempts to date again, and every woman who has taken any interest in me has, without fail, been someone I have zero interest in (a pattern that has plagued my entire life, except for one instance, hence the one, long relationship).

 

I felt, and still feel, as though it's sort of too late for me to try any additional relationships. During a time of my life when everyone else in my age group was dating and getting the experience that comes with having potentially more than a dozen relationships and/or sexual partners (early 20s), I was in a committed long-term relationship. I didn't get this experience. I missed out, and I feel like that level of relationship savvyness is sort of expected of someone my age.

How am I going to appear to someone with eight relationships under their belt, and twice as many sexual partners? I don't think it's feasible for that kind of situation to ever work out because I'm at a huge disadvantage, on all fronts.

 

This has fed an instinctual, and conscious, rejection of any and all potential relationships or even sexual encounters for the past two years, because my self-confidence has bottomed out, and it is my understanding that there is objective evidence to support my reasoning. This is partially boosted by recent revelations about my ex which have informed me that she 1) cheated on me in the final stages of our relationship and failed to ever tell me, even after the relationship was long since over, and 2) she regretted literally everything about the relationship, which for me, was the most enjoyable chapter of my life. The realization that to her, our time together is barely worth even thinking about, but to me, it was so incredibly important, is a particularly brutal shot to any positive conceptualization I have of myself or my entire romantic history.

I fear that this isolation from dating and relationships means I'm pretty much locked in to quite literally being forever alone, because the clock just keeps ticking, and I just keep falling farther and farther behind.

 

Has anyone else been in a similar situation? If so, how do you get unstuck?

I haven't heard a well-reasoned explanation of why a male in their mid-20s, with incredibly limited relationship experience and sexual diversity, has a chance at a relationship in any way shape or form. It's usually some unsatisfactory, flowery speech about "all the fish in the sea" and "just you wait"; it sounds nice, but there's no logically underpinnings that actually explain why I'm wrong to be so cynical.

And for those that say "just be confident", that's not a helpful piece of advice for this situation. Confidence in the absence of evidence that supports reasons to be confident is delusion, and I don't engage in delusion; there is an absence of evidence in my life that would allow me to be confident, so that's the way it will stay.

 

I just need a good, logical reason to maybe try, even a little. I know this takes work, but I'm just failing to see what the point is, when I'm so certain that passed on my lack of experience, failure is eminent.

[Valen]

Sheesh.... you are only 24 and you make it sound like you're 54. Imagine if a 12 yr old boy came up to you and complain that all his classmates had held several girls' hands, even a couple of them got a kiss on the cheek by some girls. He feels his lagging behind, because he had only held one girl's hand. He thought when they lock fingers, it was permanent. But one day it was over, she move on, held other boys hands. This 12 yr old feels like all the other kids got more experience than him in holding girls hand. What is he to do?

 

So what would you say to this 12 yr old? Wouldn't you think he's problems is kind of silly? That he making things much harder on himself? What advice would you have told him? Maybe something along the lines of "Whoa, you're still a kid. You have a whole life ahead of you. Who cares what other kids do, you are your own person, right? Why follow. Lead the life you want to live. You have so much to learn and so much growing to do. You will one day look back at this time in your life and just laugh about it."

 

OP, that's how I see your problem. You are still young. Your problem is self-imposed. You have so much time ahead of you to accomplish anything you set out to do, whether it be career or relationships. No one person in life has the exact same experience, so why care what others have done? Just focus on what you want to experience and go after it. Don't make excuses. Time isn't going to wait around. If you keep limiting yourself and not do anything about it, then one day you will come back to this forum as an old man, making this type of thread again. And then I would agree your problem is legitimate.

[Philosoraptor]

Well your first and biggest issue is your negative attitude and your lack of effort. Your ex went into crazy rebound mode where she has to make her life look incredible in order to help her deal with the emotions of the relationship ending. That's her issue, and honestly following what is going on in her life is going to do nothing to help you along.

 

Next, comparing your life to anyone else's is nothing but a waste of time. Whether it is your ex's life or what experiences other people your age have had... it has zero effect on your life. Who cares if they've whored around? What substance would that have added to your life other than having a few more notches on your bedpost? I'm sure you became a better lover with a continual partner than with a bunch of one night stands that wouldn't have given two ****s about anyways.

 

I promise you if you're getting passed on because of your self pity rather than what you could really offer someone. What I see is a coward, afraid of putting yourself out there because you might be judged. You rationalize your lack of effort by coming to the decision that the result of failure is unavoidable. You're a coward, simple as that. It's something many men, especially around here, have an issue doing.

 

You're going to get shot down. Women are going to make excuses and feed you BS lines in order to not talk to you. It happens, and it happens to every guy no matter how much experience he has or how he looks. But the odds aren't 100% failure and if you had more self esteem you wouldn't worry about what these women think anyways. Worst they can say is no, and that does nothing but leave you in the same place you are now. So what did you really lose by trying? Grow a pair, friend.

[salparadise]

Confidence in the absence of evidence that supports reasons to be confident is delusion, and I don't engage in delusion

 

Yes, you most certainly do engage in delusion. It's just that you prefer the ones that make you feel awful, worse case scenarios, etc. A delusion is pretty much any ideation based on one's perceptual constructs, and you've drawn a bunch of conclusions that simply have no basis other than your own negative thinking. Do I need to list them?

 

At age 24 you think it's too late to have any more relationships? There are plenty of 24 year olds and older who've never had a serious relationship, never had sex. Many of them will have happy productive lives, raise families, etc. What do you plan to do for the next 60 years, which is about how long you'd be expected to live.

 

Thinking that your ex's attitudes and behaviors define you. No, but your own attitudes and behaviors do.

 

"There is objective evidence to support my reasoning." No, there isn't! It's just the way you're choosing to see things. Your reality is created by your thoughts.

 

Change your thoughts and you'll change your life. Therapy will help. You have some seriously negative patterns that need to be replaced with positive ones.

[emva07]

There are billions of people out there, all with different levels of experience. You can't assume what they are looking for in a partner. Don't let that be the deterrent to you finding a new relationship. This experience you speak of doesn't make someone a better partner, it's just that, experiences. Your experience with your ONE gf, might've been a more valuable than the 6 experiences someone else might've had.

[ostrack]

Some of the replies here have been helpful and illuminating, but some have not, and I feel make a feeble and dismissive attempt at psychoanalysis.

 

"There are billions of people out there, all with different levels of experience..."

 

Well, realistically, when you consider the size of the community one lives in, the number of women who are single and around the same age and compatibility, that value drops to something like a few thousand at best, and this is reduced considerably when you account for how many of them you'll actually come in contact with through social connections.

 

"Sheesh.... you are only 24 and you make it sound like you're 54."

 

This is not an unsubstantial age. If I had the dating history I currently have at the age of 17 or 18, I wouldn't be concerned. There are certain societal expectations that are demanded of me by this point, and in a perfect world, they wouldn't matter, but of course, this isn't a perfect world.

 

Which brings me to the next point...

 

"There are plenty of 24 year olds and older who've never had a serious relationship, never had sex. Many of them will have happy productive lives, raise families, etc"

 

And these 24 year olds are, generally, considered to have something very wrong with them. It's not a fair characterization, but I can guarantee that in the year 2013, if you asked people if a severe lack of dating and/or sexual experience was normal into the mid-twenties, they would overwhelmingly say no, and those within that age cohort looking for a mate would hold anyone in that situation with suspicion.

Many of them might have families later on, but how much do you want to bet that the pool of potential partners for them was severely restricted as a result of their inexperience? How many of them had to settle for someone they wouldn't have to settle for had they had the advantage of increased relationship skills earlier in life?

 

We can talk about not caring about these expectations all we want, but at the end of the day, they matter to a majority of people (or else they wouldn't exist) and this directly effects all of my future relationship prospects downstream.

 

"Your reality is created by your thoughts."

 

That is obviously not true. Reality depends upon circumstances which may or may not be within our control. I can't use "good vibes" to will myself into a good situation. Bad things happen, or good things can happen, and my opinion about them has nothing to do with their frequency in my life.

I can tell myself anything I want, but that doesn't make it true.

 

"I promise you if you're getting passed on because of your self pity....the odds aren't 100% failure and if you had more self esteem you wouldn't worry about what these women think anyways"

 

I'm not getting passed on at all, because that would mean that I was making an attempt and getting ignored. I get plenty of women interested in me regularly, I'm just never interested in any of them; it's sort of a pattern that's been with me my entire life, where everyone I'm interested in has no interest in return, and everyone who has interest in my direction is not even close to being a partner I would consider. But that's a conversation for another day...and also a little irrelevant because I'm not initiating relationships either way.

 

Why does everyone seem to think that self-esteem is something you can just develop out of nothing? That it's realistic to just decide to have self-confidence? I've never understood this, and maybe it's because I'm a professional scientist. I've always considered self-esteem to arise from objective, observable characters. Just because I say I'm amazing or attractive doesn't make it so; I rely on evidence gathered in the real world to give me an impression of whether or not confidence is justified. Surely I'm not the only person who does this...

[salparadise]

You're not only irrational, you're resistant. You can choose to continue looking at the world in the most negative way possible if you enjoy the misery it brings you. Most people here are willing to give you some words of advice, good things to think about... but nobody is invested enough to want to argue when you don't consider what they've graciously given.

 

I'll let you in on a secret... I am more than twice your age, and quite enthusiastic about new beginnings, new levels of awareness, new relationships, and living life to the fullest for however long you have.

 

Why don't you go back and see if you can find a few nuggets of wisdom instead of looking for ways to shoot their words down? Wishing good things for you... really.

[Philosoraptor]

Surely I'm not the only person who does this...

Nope, you're certainly not the only person who tried to over analyze the simple things in life. You are trying to get self esteem from external sources. Self esteem is simply being happy with yourself. If you are unhappy with yourself then take charge and correct the issues that are plaguing you. I can tell you that self esteem is something you can develop out of nothing. I too was like you, over analyzing everything and trying to justify my self loathing. Then one day I decided not to care anymore and just be happy... and you'd never know that I ever lacked confidence at this point.

 

But lets get to a similar dating history, mine. I was 24 getting out of my first and only relationship. I guess you could say I missed out on these "dating" years as well... but who cares? Getting to know a person is getting to know a person... and that is the goal of dating. I'm sorry, but women find it refreshing to meet someone who picked relationships over serial dating/banging. I went from only ever have dated one woman to have dated a ton of women a year or so later. Not a single woman cared what my dating history was, they were just interested in getting to know me... because you know... that is the goal of dating. And I must ask: are the women who sleep around, and judge men on how many women they've slept with, really the women you want to be with?

 

Continue to be a coward and talk yourself out of things beforehand and your situation will never change. And you lose nothing but a few minutes of time by walking up and talking to a woman you are attracted to. At best you get a date, at worst you're in the same place you're in now... single.

[ponchsox]

Life is a gift from God and a journey. Enjoy the ride. Don't get too low when times get tough. Lean on him and he will provide the rest.