Is it? I’m 25 and while i’ve had a few dates here and their, i haven’t really had a relationship with anyone. Now I know people will be sympathetic on here, but be honest, would it be a turnoff to find a 25 year old man who’d never had some sort of relationship before? I mean i had such bad self esteem issues throughout high school that I couldn’t even ask girls to dances because I thought I was a “fat ugly weird loser” and in college I focused on school but was still afraid to ask women out.
Women really aren’t hard-charging, hard-judging darwinists. They aren’t guards patrolling the Great Wall of Texas with you on the Mexican side. They aren’t even perfectionists who won’t tolerate anything less than 100% smashing dating performance.
Well, okay, some are, but they’re a minority and probably have self-esteem issues themselves to begin with. The girl next door really lives, and she actually wants to co-operate and is ready to adapt, make adjustments and sacrifice and make room for you in her life and give you an honest chance. And a second one and sometimes a third, and sometimes even more. She probably goes down easy on you and lifts some of the emotional burdens behind the scenes. And she definitely has feelings. And, well, she’s an overall great fella, except female.
Try to just hang out with women, have fun with them, relax around them, not be scared about them, like them. They’re people first, women second. If you can deal with people, you can deal with women.
Admittedly, it may be hard if you can’t help associating women mentally with some past rejections and betrayals and abuse or otherwise a threat of humiliation or emotional pain. But if that’s the case, it’s probably a good idea to see a trained counsellor to get some help and solve in weeks what would take you years on your own, and be free afterward. It’s neither their fault nor yours, and not even a shameful thing, just something that needs to be dealt with or you’ll find it difficult to be happy.
Finally, I don’t think well-adjusted Catholic women are likely to be put off by a lack of relationship experience. On the contrary, if anything, they would actually be more likely to be put off if you did have the experience, especially those with a little fragile self-esteem. This is somewhat different from the general dating scene where people are looking for comfortable short-tame dating or live-in relationships mostly for the good feeling of it.
For the record, they might even wonder why you haven’t had a girlfriend yet, if it isn’t some sort of past trauma or emotional handicap, but they (the ‘nice ones’) will probably be looking from a friend’s perspective, not a referee’s, so to know you, to help you, not to judge you, forget vet you. You’d be surprised.
Edit: There are also always malcontents. People who, if you haven’t had a girlfriend before, will wonder what’s wrong with you that you couldn’t find one — but if you have had one in the past, they’ll wonder what’s wrong with you that the relationship has not survived. Those are hard to please, and they need a therapist, not a person of the opposite sex trying to please them.
