Well, /love/, I've scoured the internet for months seeking an answer to this question, and have found none. So now I turn to you...
Background: 23 years old, male, just entering my final year of university. Virgin, never dated, et cetera, et cetera. Not exactly the most handsome chap to walk the earth, either, and that's not me being hard on myself -- other people have told me as much IRL.
My problem, in a nutshell, is that I need to figure out how to numb myself to my loneliness. Back in my teens, I used to have it down -- didn't give two bits about girls, was perfectly happy living a life of solitude, so on and so forth. But over the past two years, my situation has become progressively harder and harder to bear.
The trollish response, of course, is for me to suck it up and find a girl. But that, for various reasons, is simply not an option. In fact, it's so wholly outside the realm of possibility that the earth would sooner stop spinning on its axis than I'd be able to start looking for dates.
Which leaves me stuck without any immediately noticeable options. More and more of my old mates are getting married now, and the continual procession of weddings is really dragging me down. One of my cousins is getting married next month, and I can barely bring myself to RSVP. I probably will -- I need to be there, I've already skipped another cousin's wedding and my relatives need me present at this one, at least -- but I'm not sure I can bear the thought of seeing the usual rigamarole.
The reception afterwards is certain to be hell on earth. I live in a very traditional Catholic family, and my relatives resolutely cannot believe that I don't have a girlfriend. I've never been able to bring myself to tell them that I've never even been on a date -- and I'm really not sure that they'd even believe me if I did. Those constant queries of, "so, [Secret Admirer], you're going to be next, right?" are driving me insane. I can't even fake a smile and say, "maybe" anymore.
And then my grandparents asking about great-grandkids....
As I'm sure you can agree, /love/, I'm in no position to be looking for an actual girlfriend -- and frankly, that's not what I want. I just want to be unaffected by this, to be able to wish my cousins and mates well in their new lives without it feeling like an act of self-mutilation.
When I started out college, ren-ai visual novels, manga, and anime series were enough to keep the loneliness at bay. A well-done episode or chapter in a game could keep me flying high for weeks. Now, the effect barely lasts all the way through the scene that instilled it within me. Watching a series like To Heart, that back in high school would have buoyed my spirits to the point where I was invulnerable to these feelings, now plays out more like a roller coaster. Good vibrations for a few brief moments, and then back to my despair.
So finding a real girl is out, and I seem to be building an immunity to fiction. Now I ask you, /love/, how can I numb myself to these feelings of loneliness? How can I restore that invulnerability that used to carry me through life?
It's a hard question. It really is. One that I don't believe actually has an answer. The best thing I can come up with right now would be to see if you can find a girl to get close to and see how you feel about it.
I understand the workings of your mind. I'm 19, still a virgin, and even though I have had one girlfriend before, it wasn't a serious one and we broke up within a month, it was my choice to. I fade into fiction a great deal to provide myself with the type of emotional relief you were explaining.
But the only way out of it is to find someone you care about, even if it's not necessarily looking for commitment. See if you can find someone. You really don't have anything to lose from what I can tell. Keep us updated. We'll see what we can do.
I am a 20 year old college student, no girlfriend, still a virgin so I empathize. I am really shy around girls and it is hard for me to make new friends anyways, so you can imagine that my first year away from was lonely. Since I had no one to hang out with, I would just use my free time to study and after a while I didn't notice that I was lonely. So my advice is to keep yourself busy, to the point where you don't have time to worry about not having a girlfriend. And try not to spend it on anime and manga. Focus your energy on something productive like work, or exercise.
Eventually things will work out. For me after a while I started to make friends, though I still don't that many females friends, I am adding names to the list. Also relatives help too. They have to love you unconditionally, so go to the wedding and have some fun. If your grandparents ask you why you don't have a girlfriend, tell them you are focusing on your career and don't have time for a girlfriend. They should understand and might even praise you.
Besides, haven't you seen 'Wedding Crashers?' Weddings are a wonderful place to find women. You don't have to be actively looking for women, but if something goes your way, why not go for it?
if you're really desperate and aren't totaly poor, i bet you could find some poor foreign girl who's desperate to get married to anyone so she can stay in the country. i know a couple of people who've married such people... pretty sad, but it would be a female and it would be in a relationship of sorts with you, right?
or perhaps you could get to know some ugly desprate girls, and through them you might meet a half decent looking friend of thiers- they usualy have some. it would probly help :) anyway, please don't view getting a girlfriend as totaly outside the realm of possibilities, i'm a pretty good looking female, and i'd date someone who wasn't very attractive if i liked their personality.
to totaly numb yourself to the loneliness would be very very hard, as its human nature to want to have such social experiences, your instincts as a male at this age will be screeching 'find a female! reproduce!' and such... i really don't knw how you'd do that. Maybe if you have something lik a hobby etc you're very passionate about, you can focus the vast majority of your attention on that.
I appreciate the responses so far. I think >>3's sounds reasonable -- concentrate on work. The current semester break is giving me plenty of opportunities to contemplate my situation. Even summer employment can only occupy so much of one's time. Hopefully, once classes resume I'll be able to get past this.
For >>2 and >>4, and even >>3 to an extent, I'm not being self-deprecating when I say that getting a girlfriend is an impossibility. I've posted here before, and suffice it to say that I'm not quite like most guys -- I'm an asexual. I still suffer cravings for companionship, but I have no natural outlet for these feelings. Something inside me yearns for the presence of a girl, but it's purely an abstract desire. Out in the real world, I feel no physical attraction towards anyone.
I suppose, hypothetically, I might be able to live with a purely platonic relationship, absent any sort of physical intimacy. But I strongly doubt, and for good reason, I think, that any girl would be willing to go along with such an endeavor. Certainly not on monogamous terms.
How do you know you don't want a real relationship if you never had sex ? Have you ever fallen in love, and I mean REALLY FALLEN IN LOVE, not some stupid teenage crush.
Falling in love only happens when you are at a peak of your life, for example, when your work is going great/you make something that makes people notice you (for the good reasons, don't do anything stupid!)/you simply are happy, and in love with something.
What you need is passion, and not necessarily a woman, but I believe that having a woman in your life, and even experimenting sex would be a great step into understanding passion. It's a hard process honestly, so good luck if you ever decide do go this way.
Also, you can no longer numb yourself because:
1) Family pressure
2) You don't have passion for anime/games any longer.
Solutions are:
1) Be honest, completely, wholly, FULLY honest.
2) Find a new passion, experiment basic things like writing, drawing, programming.
It all comes down to this: men, NEED passion, no matter how much you deny it, passion makes you feel alive, and makes your existence mean something. Numbing yourself like you are trying to is for angsty nerds who can't accept that they are truly alive, and that they have the strength to do whatever they feel like.
>I still suffer cravings for companionship, but I have no natural outlet for these feelings.
18, virgin, never had a relationship before. For the most part of my life, I was like you. Emotionally stable, comfortable, and safe by myself. I had chances, but the idea of anyone getting really close to me perturbed me. I was perfectly fine by myself, socialising in my group of friends, but always careful not to take it any further than that. I had my reasons. I was a very, very independent person. Then in an uncharacteristic moment of mine, I let someone into my world. I felt so satisfied and elated at the same time. The feeling was so addictive. That warmth...I can't describe. Once you taste it, you're hooked.
>Have you ever fallen in love, and I mean REALLY FALLEN IN LOVE, not some stupid teenage crush.
No and no. I've never had a crush, teenage or otherwise. Girls -- at least the girls I've seen, anyway -- never really caught my eye, so to speak.
>Solutions are:
>1) Be honest, completely, wholly, FULLY honest.
I'm not clear on this part. What should I be honest about? To whom should I be honest?
Never? Are you saying that you've never ever been attracted (even physically) to any girl?
If this was the case ever since you were young, then I'll have to agree with your claims of being asexual. But if this only started happening in your adolescent years, then I would strongly think that this "indifference" towards the other sex, points to your insecurities about your own looks. Like an extreme case of your ordinary guy calling a hot slutty girl "ugly". But really, he knows he could never get a chance with her, so spurns her first. Except with you, it sounds like it's gone beyond that, and your shutting everyone out for your own protection. Rejecting them, before they reject you.
>Never? Are you saying that you've never ever been attracted (even physically) to any girl?
Not so far as I can remember, no.
I did, at one point (elementary school) count some girls amongst my circle of friends, but I can't recall how I felt about them.
Within recent memory, my feelings about girls are as I've previously described.
>I'm not clear on this part. What should I be honest about? To whom should I be honest?
You should be honest about yourself to everyone, including you. Think about it: if men are animals with feelings and they love, how come you don't ? Some kind of mental illness ? Some kind of trauma ?
OP, >>9 has a point in there you know, maybe your image of yourself is simply to low, and you consider women unattainable; because of this, you lie to yourself saying you are asexual. You exclude yourself, and take love away from yourself. How can that be normal ?
Think about it instead of discussing it with us, you really need to experiment love. Good luck
Well, I've been doing some thinking about this, and I think I've arrived at a plan of action.
Regardless of how my asexuality came about (and, frankly, I can't remember -- seems to me that I've always been this way), the fact of the matter remains that it is present, and any future action I take regarding this matter will necessarily have to factor that in.
Saying that I need to experience love is all well and good, and may even be true, but it is my understanding that certain prerequisites need to exist in order for love between two people to come to fruition. One of those prerequisites, if I recall correctly, is mutual attraction. Since my asexuality inhibits my ability to be attracted to girls (or anyone else), any bond of attraction I would find myself in would be a one-way bond (i.e. a girl who is attracted to me, outrageous as that sounds, but for whom I feel nothing). Since this would not, naturally, be a mutual bond of attraction, one of the principle prerequisites for love between two people would be unfulfilled. And, thusly, love would not exist between myself and the other player in this exercise.
Considering this, it appears that the only prudent course of action is to soldier on with my life and attempt to find something to which I can devote my time and energy, as >>3 suggested. Until such time as I find said pursuit, I'll just have to summon up the strength of will to withstand this loneliness.
Fortunately, history does show that there have been several successful men in various fields who endured lifelong bachelorhood, yet still enjoyed long and fulfilling lives. There's some solace to be had in that knowledge, at least.
Hard for me to see that you left this thread with a plan of action - it sounds like you're still in the same situation as you were on the first post.
In my case it seems that whenever I gave up chasing something I ended up finding it, whether it was friendship or a girlfriend.
Whatever it may be, whether friendship or love, I think you need to be happy with yourself first before you can truly share something with someone else.
Not sure how this helps as advice, especially since it's basically a rewording of >>3