I'm not really sure what I'm hoping to gain by posting this here, because the reality is it's only one of several proverbial elephants sitting on my shoulders when it comes to dating. I'm a guy who will be 31 in just a few months and is still a virgin. I've been in relationships before, the first serious one lasting over 3 years when I was 17-20. The way that played out is, in large part, how I've gotten to this point in my life. It was mentally abusive for me in many ways and I won't go into all the details unless it's deemed relevant, but long story short she said all along that she wanted to wait to have sex, and I was fine with that. Then after 3 years I discovered that she was cheating on me with a 28 year old registered sex offender (she was 18 at that time). It really messed me up in the head.
I've chatted with a few girls here and there since then, only one of which turned into another relationship 3 years later. At that point I was 23 and it still didn't feel like a big deal to bring up being a virgin. The thing is, I discovered that I was actually very nervous of that new relationship becoming sexual, so much so that I found I was now the one insisting that I wanted to wait for full-on sex. The relationship was still intimate and we did other sexual acts, but in the end she left me after 8 months stating my sexuality as a driving factor. The thing is, I probably would have lost it to her, and she wanted me to, except that she never once said 'I love you' to me even though I had said it to her from about 4 months in. It just never felt right and in the end I'm glad it didn't happen.
I've chatted with a couple of other women through dating apps around 5 years ago and they honestly seemed to get somewhat serious over the course of several months, but were long distance and never panned out. So here we are today. I've now been single six and a half years and absolutely zero dating life for the past 4-5 years of it. I've pretty well settled into being single and virtually accepted that this will be my reality. I've had profiles on multiple dating apps for years with no luck and honestly haven't really thought about how being a virgin would effect my dating life at this point because the idea of having another relationship has become so foreign and forgotten. The past few days are what has landed me here, however. My sister-in-law has been lightly trying to play matchmaker for years, and by matchmaker I mean showing me pictures of her friends on facebook and saying 'what about her??' Well she's been hung up on one in particular who she thinks really ticks some of my boxes. I don't drink alcohol at all (one of the other elephants I mentioned earlier) and she claims this girl doesn't either. I've been laughing it off for a few months, but the other day my SIL reached out to this girl through text and has been trying to get me to "slide up in her DM's" the past two nights saying that she's interested in me. It's the closest I've been to talking with someone in years and the sudden reality hit me that even if I did try to get to know someone and date.. I have absolutely no idea how to bring up the fact that I'm not only still a virgin, but more or less set on holding onto it until I'm pretty sure I've found the person I could spend my life with. What kind of image that gives off, what fallout will come of it. I feel that I've set myself up for failure, 'damned if I do and damned if I don't' type of situation. I feel like it's extremely unfair of me to seek out a relationship with someone new and expect them to have to deal with and work around this. I understand that sex is an important part of a relationship for nearly everyone and the same holds true for me, just in a different way than most people. Nobody in my life knows that I'm a virgin, they have their suspicions, but I've never said it, so I've come to the anonymity of reddit for advice in this totally overthought, self-destructive brain buster of a situation. Is this something that is more common than I think, that I should be able to bring up and find out that it's not actually that big of a deal? Or am I carrying some heavy baggage that is going to be unhealthy and unfair to someone new?
submitted by /u/Tosser1029384756
[link] [comments]
