Correct for part. I'm in a similar situation, but only 28. Five years to go. Twelve to a movie.
In my mind—and this is entirely anecdotal—sex and relationships are merely a checkpoint for the life of a person. It's nothing more than a signifier, of which people place a negative connotation on being a virgin. I'm not here by choice, but by inability to progress against these signifiers.
While I agree with your point about the sex being irrelevant, the entirety of the statement of "It's sex" framed as a triviality is dead wrong. I, and I assume most other virgins, have severe issues with dealing with social cues. When you say "someone" who is that? Is it someone at the bar? A friendly glance at work? I can't tell. I'm pretty bad at learning social cues. I'm not sure where to do them. Or at who.
And because I'm bad at learning those social cues, I'm afraid to be forward. A friend who was sexually harassed at work gave me the advice to try a small company because "they have more relationships between coworkers there." It's somewhat irrelevant advice given how tone-deaf I am to general human interactions. Kind of ironic too, considering I probably couldn't tell the difference between harmless office flirting and sexual harassment. Which is why it's precluded in my mind.
Much like T.H. White's Merlin, I realize my doom, but am unable to change it. I'm guessing it's a chemical issue with my locus of control.
EDIT: I spend a majority of my free time in the gym. I'm very fit, so it's not a matter of appearance. Minus any crazy expression on my face.
I'm fully cognizant of the fact that the right person and the right time may never come. I'm okay with that.
That said, I came to see relationships and the intimacy that comes with it as very valuable once I 'tried' it, despite the fact that said relationships were, to a large degree, painful. I learned a tremendous amount from them, and there were a lot of benefits I didn't really understand before.
My approach is that something I haven't tried before is worth trying, especially if it's a 'common' thing. But at the same time I feel doing so because it's a 'common' thing is not the best of motivations.
I agree and am certainly open to being in a relationship if I find someone that I am interested in. The biggest barrier to entry for me has been finding people that I like honestly. I actually have difficulty conceptualizing what it means to "like" someone (although I assume the feeling is significantly different from friendship and exponentially 'more pleasurable' than friendship).
> I learned a tremendous amount from them, and there were a lot of benefits I didn't really understand before.
Would you mind elaborating?
I learned a lot of uncomfortable stuff about my behavior in a short time
These were things that I had never noticed before, despite being a very introspective, reflective person (and a psychologist to boot). And I think the relationship was key to that. While my friendships also uncover new truths about myself, I can generally keep things as superficial as I desire, and I have a lot of control over when to see my friends, in what context, and for how long. Relationships (generally) have a tendency to break out of those patterns, uncovering a lot in a short time.
This has proved so beneficial that I don't even regret some of the truly toxic and emotionally harrowing situations I've been in. No pain, no gain, I guess.
For certain things of varying importance, I could rely on my 'significant other'. A form of symbiosis, I guess
I am not a practical or very, uh, physical man. When I'm caught up in something, I forget to eat (or eat healthily), I forget to do my laundry or clean my house, I forget to meet friends (either for my benefit, theirs, or both of ours), or I forget to even just go outside.
And once I break out of this obsession, I often realize in hindsight that it wasn't always worth forgetting that other stuff. And yet I keep doing this, and from looking at my father, this is quite possibly something I cannot break out of without significant effort. Effort that I'd rather spend on other things.
When I was in a relationship with someone who was different enough in these regards, but similar enough to not cause too much friction, my life improved immensely, including the efficacy of the targets of my obsessions. It turns out a balanced life is usually better :).
While this might be an extreme example and you might not identify with this, I think most people have their blind spots, and while my previous point could arguably be 'solved' by fixing the flaws, it is much harder (and perhaps less desirable) to 'fix' these personality traits.
Sex, physical intimacy, and a direct 'responsibility' to another person is generally a fundamental aspect of being human
I am happy alone. Truly happy. I also probably have a lower libido than most. I don't understand people who can't be alone or need sex all the time and will put up with terrible partners or consequences to achieve this.
And yet, I learned that while I am perhaps unusual in this regard, it's quite likely that to some degree I learned to be happy alone, and I learned to be happy without having sex very often, but this might not be my ideal state. And experimenting in this regard has given me a more nuanced view of myself, where I realize that the hug I get might be exactly the one I needed, even though I didn't feel like that before I got the hug (for example).
The bottom-line is that I've known many people in relationships and I've known many people without them. Happiness is perhaps as closely related to being in one or the other category as we often think, but there is a relation, in my opinion.
'Norms' can be at the very least informative as to what is likely a healthy approach. And my personal experience with people who have no (romantic) relationships, or for that matter people who have no friends, is that especially later in life they seem to grow in a way that does not seem to make them happier. More successful perhaps, or more valuable to society, but often obviously (to me) less happy. Loneliness is a terrible affliction, and can sneak up on you.
Whether you want to take the risk of being 'on your own' (in whichever particular form you choose) depends partly on your desired outcome, of course. Newton was a recluse, but perhaps he lived the most fulfilling and happy life he could have led, and at the very least he was very important to the world (in my opinion).
For me, I don't want to take such a risk without having experimented with the alternatives. I might very well choose to remain alone for much of my life, but at least I have (some) idea of what I might be missing out on, and some experience and skill to reconsider my choices later (which can be hard if you have no experience in this regard).
That said, I'm still young and I might be full of shit... :-). Ask me again in a few decades!
(also, perhaps the key point is that I didn't always greatly desire a relationship and I didn't always like the person. Especially the first time, it was a conscious choice to try something big, new, and potentially dangerous, but less dangerous than I had initially thought).
I find it interesting you're interested looking for the correct situation. Have you turned down prior situations where it didn't meet what you were looking for?
I'm quite a bit more broken than an average person—I don't think I could wait for a "right" anything.
I am in the same situation as you. It took me a while to realise it, but I am not good at understanding certain cues and I have no idea what to do about it. I always need to correct my perceptions. E.g "That woman is probably being really friendly because she's just friendly. She's probably not interested." At one point I got quite depressed. Eventually, still curious about sex, I just hired a sex worker. It's legal here and I save a lot of money being single.
At this point I have mostly resigned myself to the reality that I'll probably be single for the rest of my life.
That's strongly correlated with age. Below a certain age it is expected that you are a virgin, then there is a gray area and then above a certain age it is expected that your not.
Because we define 'normal' as 'what everybody does' being an outlier in this is perceived as negative, as if there is something wrong with you. That does not mean there is (or isn't), it just means that's how it will be perceived, it's a strike against that only gets stronger as you age.
The conflation of normal and normative reaches into Wittgensteinian territory, but normative is normal. Hell, even the good end of a bell curve can be seen as a bad thing.
Edit: I mean incredible in the colloquial sense, not the literal ("I don't believe you") sense.
I'll have to ask her about it tomorrow. There was one thing for her even worse than that, which would make her recommendation even more incredible to you. We're good enough friends to talk about things like that, I wonder if she's projecting her internal views of me on to other people.
No more about my friend, please. I feel wrong alluding to these situations.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence_under_Bayes_theorem
It could be that none of his bad situation is the result of his preferences, but his situation shouldn't be ignored either. You have to be able to consider that you did something unwise in order to take hints from the environment.
Conversely, the logical extension is that you should be on board with your partners freely having fun sex, with whomever they desire.
For example, I was recently in a situation where I felt no sex drive whatsoever, but greatly valued the intimacy of the particular relationship that was developing. The lack of sex drive had little to do with the partner's attractiveness, it just wasn't there. I have that sometimes.
Since for me 'sex was irrelevant', but for her sex and intimacy (understandably) went together, we talked about this and found a happy middle ground where we could share intimacy, and I could 'give her' sexual satisfaction without caring too much for it myself. In fact, I could do this precisely because I didn't care too much, and I was absolutely willing to do her a 'favor' (and it wasn't entirely unenjoyable to me, of course).
At some point she wanted a bit more mutual sexual desire, so our arrangement changed. Because we talked about it, this went quite smoothly and to this day there is a lot of intimacy (within the bounds of what is situationally desirable). I don't think we'd have gotten to that point if we had not had a whole bunch of good conversations about the exact relationship between sex and intimacy in the context of our 'partnership'.
I could elaborate on that point but my thinking is that this submission is going to get kicked off the front page so it seems futile.
Also if you read his story he writes: "Every girl I’ve ever cared for has rejected me." So it's not like he didn't try.
if he is holding on to the hurt from that long ago, im not surprised there is no one who wants to get intimate with him.
Although I'd have to advise this guy to just go get laid so it's not a sticking point in his relationships. And it's just fun. Go have fun with someone. It's sex, not a rocket launch.