I’m 34, male, and never had a gf. But I feel like half of my reasons for wanting a gf involve mindless fornication with a pretty lady, and the other half is about validation and approval from a group that doesn’t actually exist among my peers.

Instead, the ostensible “group” is just an illusion, pushed by Hollywood movies and the music industry. Jokes about virgins, plotlines ending in “getting the girl” - could it all be based on lies?

In reality, I don’t even know if I’m willing to set apart the time, energy, and possibly money for romance in any capacity. I think I just want to play “catch-up” so I can feel less embarassed about myself. I want to feel capable of doing anything that neurotypical people can, rather than admit I’m disabled in some way.

Or, maybe I’m just saying all of this to myself to avoid admitting I’m just not that appealing in general, especially since I’ve tried mixers, dating apps, and speed-dating without making any progress at all, and maybe it is because of a disability. (I do feel like I have a lot to offer, though.)

I know this is a big ask but advice tends to be “go to therapy/go to a doctor” when someone has mental health issues for obvious reasons but I’ve been working on them for years and I’m scared because it doesn’t seem like there’s any proper solution afterwards. Diagnosed major depressive disorder, on Cymbalta currently after trying a few different SSRIs/SSNIs. I’m not some stereotype rambling about Stacy and Chad or hating “foids” or whatever but whenever my loneliness come up in my appointments my therapist and my psychiatrist just don’t seem to know what to do, it’s like it’s completely impossible for them to even imagine being so isolated. I don’t need help taking apart the black pill but my doctors just seem to not get anything.

Essentially it comes down to me saying something like “After trying for years to cultivate friends and acquaintances and hopefully a girlfriend it is 99.999% not going to happen and I’m scared because life without these relationships feels completely hopeless. This fear has been validated by how empty and depressed I’ve been feeling most of my life.” Usually either doctor is kinda taken aback and either doubles down on “well you haven’t exhausted every angle of socialization yet” or “come on don’t you have some friends that text you” when I’m close to exhausting everything in my county to the point that I’m probably “the weird single guy that always shows up to online things” and ”no, I do not have a single person outside my parents or my boss who would know if I’m dead or not if I just disappear for a few weeks.”

I’ve been forcing myself to try and be social for years and I’ve spent probably $15,000 between all the pills and appointments, and an average of two weekends a month on every little meetup group, social night at a bar, class, volunteer opportunity, etc. I’ve absolutely wrung things dry and I don’t have anything to show for it. Short of lowering every other part of my QOL by moving to NYC or LA or Chicago I’m very soon going to run out of things to do in my region.

My success: my social skills have moved from extremely poor to simply worse than average. I estimate someone who just met me could think of me as somewhat normal in short conversation. I feel so alienated that saying I always have empathy might be a stretch, but I have deep sympathy for other peoples’ problems, particularly the homeless and animals. I volunteer a decent amount and that’s probably the only reason to look forward to the future.

My failures: just about everything else.

Minorly NSFW, but I'll of course leave out anything gross.

I am 25, this happened about 3 months ago. I met the perfect girl who was into me through a mutual friend. We dated for a total of like 6 months, she lived about an hour away from me so we didn't see each other every day, but did every other weekend. I thought I had finally found my person.

Issues arose when we tried to have sex. I didn't tell her I was a virgin as I thought she would start being icked out since I'm 25 and a virgin (this turned out to be correct). The first time we had sex it was really bad. I didn't know what I was doing at all. She was upset and I was more humiliated than I ever have been. After that I told her it was my first time. She didn't really react. From then on she wasn't as eager to have sex anymore. She was really the one pushing for it but since we weren't in a relationship I was hesitant because I figured this would happen if we were only in the early stages.

We had sex twice after that, she didn't really tell me what to do or what she liked. She just didn't seem into it, so we stopped. In the last month we were seeing each other she called me and said we should just be friends. When I asked her what went wrong, she said that she doesn't think we're sexually compatible but she had a good time being with me and wanted to stay friends.

I was heartbroken and we haven't talked since. Now recently, I heard through our mutual friend that she was "shocked" that I was a virgin at such an old age.

It just feels like this is impossible and that this is just a pattern that was bound to happen. Women my age have likely already had a ton of amazing sex, and if they like me they'd have to sacrifice good sex for me, when they could probably with less effort find a guy that knows what he's doing.

I started so late and now I'm too far behind to catch up. This gets me to the crux of what I need advice on. I don't know how I'm supposed to learn if no one wants to teach. No woman has an obligation to teach me just because I was a loser who couldn't find a woman that wanted to have sex with me, and I doubt any woman wants to spend months having bad sex with me in order to learn.

This feels like Sisyphean task of learning how to be good in bed when 1. i probably blew it with one of the maybe 3 women alive that would even want to sleep with me, and 2. of the last 2 women, they probably also want good sex and that's not something I can do.

Genuine question. This might have come up before but not all guys who haven’t had sex hate women, or blame them for their own problems. The same way not all women who haven’t had sex hate men. Surely there’s a middle ground here, of respecting women and knowing their boundaries, whilst still wishing they could have a girlfriend or some kind of sexual relationship. I see many guys call themselves incels because they are, in the literal sense, involuntarily celibate people who don’t blame their issues on other people. I take full responsibility for my own actions and life, but I still hate the position I’m in and don’t really know how to make progress. If you call someone an incel, there is so much negativity and hateful ideology associated with that word, but not everyone who calls themselves an incel has that hateful attitude at all. Just something I was thinking about

It really upsets me to hear people answer incels with some variation of “be a man, toughen up, etc” and its hard to articulate why.

Im not a masculine man. Ive never been a masculine man. Thats not something im insecure about, in fact im very comfortable with my gender. But when i see the men around me who have much more success, it becomes clear that women would like me a lot more if i was more masculine. Women find non-smiling male faces more attractive than smiling ones, for example. The pressure to be masculine just really kills me.

I understand that the ideal masculine man will have no fear asking out every woman he sees and taking the initiative all the time but like, I’m a man with feelings. In my last (only) relationship, I took her out and drover everywhere and planned and paid and texted first and called all the time, and she couldnt as much as learn to pronounce my name, much less remember my birthday. Obviously not all women are like that, but like, what did I expect from taking the “initiatory role” in a relationship, it was obviously gonna be one-sided because it was one-sided from the inception. But im supposed to just be courting all these women performing and smiling like a clown while they judge me.

Idk what im even trying to say.
Whenever i hear the advice “just ask more women out” I just cant help but think, why am I doing this for someone who would never do the same for me. Their idea of flirting is to stand and look pretty but im supposed to be actively pursuing. Its not a motivating story. I want to be a receiver of love sometimes too man i cant just give give give

I go to the gym every day, sometimes if our schedules line up, I'll go with my friend. A few weeks ago we met this one woman who I thought was really cute. She asked for some help setting up a weird machine we had just jumped off of. Whenever I saw her, I'd smile and wave and eventually it got to the point where if we were working out near each other she'd come over to have a conversation.

I want to make it clear, I'm not one of those guys that goes to the gym and bothers women as they work out. I wouldn't do more than smile and wave until she started coming over to speak. She was really funny, we had a lot of shared interests and she worked in the same field so we had a lot of topics in common to talk about. I started developing a crush on her and looked forward to seeing her and speaking to her. She never really asked about my friend but she would speak to him if he was there with me, and I assume if she ran into him and I wasn't there she was speaking to him.

I didn't think it had been enough time for me to ask her out, but I asked her for her Instagram and she gave it to me, and last weekend I invited her to go to a bar for a trivia night with me and my friends. She brought some other girls with her and we were having a good time. She spoke mainly to me and my friend mentioned above. I didn't try to push things as I didn't want to be weird. Near the end of the night she was acting very close to my friend.

Eventually the women all decided to call it a night and decided to go home. My friend offered to drive her home and then it clicked to me. They drove off, and in the morning I get a text in the group chat confirming that they did end up hooking up.

I don't really have any other way of saying it, so I'll just say that when an incel says "chad", my friend looks pretty close to what they imagine. He's 6'3, he's handsome, in good shape, strong masculine features. I'm very clearly not. I'm nothing special. I'm only 5'10, I'm probably only average looking on my best days. I have a good body compared to the average person, but I'm not as built as my friend.

I'm not mad at either of them. He didn't know that I had a crush on her. I did end up telling him one on one and he apologized and said he never would've tried to sleep with her if he had known. I'm of course not mad at her for being interested in him. I mean of course if she sees both him and I together, she wouldn't choose me. I'm more mad at myself for thinking there was even a chance there.

I feel like I have made a lot of progress. I haven't really ever been a "hateful" incel. My problem has always been self hate and a feeling of romantic hopelessness. I don't want to backslide, but this just feels like confirmation of whatever I felt about myself back then. I don't know how I can rationalize this any other way.

Hey all. I treat every women I interact with differently then I do with males, Even my women friends or partners. I just victimize them in my head, because I ultimately feel like they are society's ultimate victims, especially trans women or women of color. Sometimes I feel unworthy of talking to women. Obviously this is a problem and it feels slightly misogynistic on my part to victimize every women, I meet because I don't know her life story of course.

My question is how do I stop doing this. I know the obvious answer is to just realize that women are human too and obviously I realize that, but I feel like that can't be the only answer. There are bigoted women too, but I'd consider those women way more of a victim then an Incel would be.

I know this post will sound stupid, and also mods feel free to remove it if it's against the rules.

Consuming incel content and gender war ragebait just gives me a sick sort of enjoyment, even though it makes me feel like shit about myself. Life can be monotonous, especially at my tedious desk job, so doom scrolling can deliver me a shot of strong emotion, like a mixture of self-righteous rage and low self-esteem. My biggest insecurity is my height, so I induce the strongest feelings by browsing all the height discourse that's out there.

What's stupid about it is that I'm actually in a long-term relationship, so certainly not an "incel" technically. I was, however, a virgin until I was 23, and in my early 20s I developed this mental tendency to enjoy wallowing and self-pitying. Feeling like a damned person can just be very addictive, and I feel like if I ever "took the blue pill", I'd be losing a precious source of powerful emotions. I must add that my ongoing incel fixations are partially on "behalf" of my brother, who's even shorter than me and has been single for a good while, so I worry about him. But I also manage to make it about myself too.

In general, I feel like my emotions walk me like a dog. Too bad, because I have lots of interests that I could explore if I had a bit of discipline. I'd like to find a way to overcome this apparent addiction, or at least channel my residual emotions into something productive.

I’ve never been in a romantic relationship before. One of my biggest fears in life is falling in love with someone, building a life with them, growing old with them, and finding out that they’ve been unfaithful the entire time. It would be so humiliating. I would feel like a fool. My whole love life will have been a lie. I wouldn’t have been loved the way I wanted to be loved, the way I gave it, the way I was promised. It would break me. I want true love, something real, something beautiful.

Maybe it is foolish to trust anyone, to love anyone. People are ignorant, weak, and careless. Why expect anything out of anyone? They will only disappoint you. Do you know how many people cheat? Not a single stat I’ve come across was ever all that inspiring.

​

I couldn't fall asleep, and cried for a few hours recently due to never getting a girlfriend and people blaming me for it

I was thinking about suicide but I'll probably never actually kill myself..

I unsubscribed from every sex/gender related bullshit, cause I don't wanna see them, and wanna focus on something else

I guess I'm open to taking general advices on what should I do

25, Never got laid but had girlfriends and of course an unfortunate Gooner…like…Bad bad not oh I’ll spank the Monkey once and be done with it for today. I’ve had girlfriends and have a girl interested in me but i don’t want to be with someone I see as beneath me. She’s overweight and even if she’s nice and interested the whole idea is throwing me off.

Has Porn warped my brain to expect only Hot women to be interested in me?. Or has the Redpill things I’ve watched influenced me so much i can’t even conceptualise a non conventionally attractive woman as a partner? That sound more like Vanity and pride to me and it’s worrying.

I don’t approach Women cos the idea of rejection especially in a public setting is revolting to me and would straight up be terrible the very idea makes my stomach churn… every time I get interested in some girl I talk to irl they’re dating or Married already and it’s like no one I ever have any passing interest in is taken already thus seeing couples makes me bitter and Hateful nowadays as they have something i don’t

I thought I was improving but over the last few days I have backslid into some of my old ways of thinking. When looking at some chats from the previous year I recognized a lot of people responding to the same questions I’ve been asking for help with for years now.

After a breakup 8 years ago I decided to stop dating to fix myself. I used to get infatuated with whomever I was dating way to quickly and when the relationship inevitably ended I was not kind to say the least. Bless those women who had to deal with my dumbass, they deserved way better from me. In the time I was taking a break I was hoping to work on myself so that I could get back into dating without having it dominate my life but I’ve hit a setback.

I need help decentering women and sex. Most days those two things are all I think about and I am really struggling to find ways to decenter women so i can live a fulfilling life. On top of that I struggle to maintain a clean living space, I feel like I’m buried under books, movies, comics, records. And I struggle with porn, I’m hesitant to use the word addicted although it’s probably closer to the truth than I care to admit to myself.

This is probably the most honest I’ve ever been on one of these posts. But seeing comments and chats from years ago where I realize I have been like a hamster on a wheel hurt. How do I decenter women so I can live my life for me?

This is inspired by a controversial post someone made about giving up on dating and made buying a Porsche their new goal. Advice often given on here is to develop interest, goals and meaning outside of relationships as part of the exit process. Is it just someone attitude when making these choices or is there something more? Does there need to be a certain amount of effort getting into relationships before shifting directions?

I'm 20 and I'm a Filipino guy who was born in the UK. Since I was 18, I've gotten into the Blackpill and it's destroying my mental health. I can't explain my entire life in full detail, but I will explain below some of my issues and how they affect me.

• 5'4", skinny, big forehead (possibly receding hairline), ugly, small dick, short-sighted, alcohol intolerance.
• Diagnosed with Dyslexia, ADHD and developmental delays with significantly below-average processing speed.
• Very poor social skills, no friends or girlfriend, still a virgin and missed out on my teenage years as I never partied, dated or went to clubs.
• Struggled academically because I couldn't read well, and I never had a job or driver's licence because of my poor processing speed.
• Bullied in school for being short, Asian, and neurodivergent.

Unfortunately, I've started believing that your genetics determine the quality of your life and I just hate that you cannot choose your genetics and you just have to accept the cards you are dealt. I understand that everyone has problems but it gets to a point where you have so many stacked disadvantages that life becomes miserable. I don't just have a "few flaws". I'm dealing with a lot of problems at the same time.

I've never lived a normal life, and I've always been playing catch up. It started in school, where I struggled to make friends, and I was failing the majority of my exams because of my learning difficulties. The same thing is happening in adulthood. I've never had a job, I've never had a driver's licence, I have no friends and I've never experienced a relationship. I failed to reach the developmental milestones that everyone seemed to.

Also, advice like "just be confident" doesn't work for me because I feel like it's for people who already have functioning social skills but are just shy. I can't start, maintain or think of what to say in conversations because I'm mentally slow. This is not just being shy, I have genuine difficulties with socialising.

It hurts when you look at people your age getting into relationships, earning good money and generally living a good life while I'm stuck in the same position I was since I was 16. Even the people who picked on me in school are doing better than me in life.

I'm basically failing in every single aspect of my life because of my genetics. I keep viewing myself as genetically inferior, stupid, slow, incompetent, and I don't know how to stop. I have no redeeming genetic qualities, and I don't know what to do from now. I'm scared for my future.

I'm an Incel, 25M, never kissed, never held hands, never anything. Now, I've been going through my personal growth and all of that, and while I wouldn't exactly say that I'm in a good place right now, it's definitely the best one yet. I've had situations with girls my age that went nowhere recently, which is already a great improvement from nothing, which means it might happen that one of these might go somewhere in the near future.

So I started wondering... When should I tell her about my inceldom and all of that? Because, if we want to jump to the literal celibacy thing, I'm sure I'd want her to know before we have sex, I know that I'll be incredibly anxious when it happens and I'll need to communicate properly or I wouldn't be able to go through with it. But... Why not the other things then? I mean, I don't want to keep things hidden, so when should I tell her that she was my first kiss? Before we kiss? No... Just after probably. Or not at all? Because you know, I'd be exposing myself a lot... Do I really trust this person enough to do it?

Basically my fear is that the average person requires a significantly lower level of trust than me to do any romantic/sexual thing, as of course they'd be my firsts. And I really would need to communicate it, not doing it would make me so anxious that it would become clear anyway that there's a problem of some sort. But if I expose myself and say it... Well that requires even more trust, and I'm not sure it's that possible to build it with someone before they naturally gravitate towards those kind of things. Cause like, a kiss is the most basic thing ever... And I feel like I almost need to blindly trust a person with my life to do it. It's the kind of trust that takes months to build...

What are your takes on this? Do you feel the same? Any feedback is appreciated :)

I’m 19 and I don’t consider myself an incel in the sense of hating women or thinking women owe me anything. But I’ve noticed myself developing increasingly negative thoughts about myself and I really don’t like it.
I’ve never had a girlfriend and I desperately want one. I want affection, intimacy, to feel attractive and wanted. I also crave female attention and validation way more than I think is healthy.

The problem is that I’ve started tying my self-worth almost entirely to whether girls find me attractive. I constantly compare myself to other guys, obsess over my appearance, and get jealous when I see other people receiving romantic/sexual attention. Sometimes I genuinely think I’ll never get a girlfriend and that there’s something fundamentally wrong with me.

I’m also extremely afraid of rejection. I’ve made a few very small attempts at talking to girls, but none went anywhere, I also never actually asked one out or told my feelings. Ideally I’d want something like friends-to-lovers, where a girl gets to know me and eventually becomes interested in me, rather than having to repeatedly approach strangers and get rejected. I especially wish a girl would initiate some of the early interactions so I’d know she was interested before I put myself out there.

I don't even think I'm ugly, I get looks more girls every now and again, most recent one was 3 weeks ago when I was on vacation. Also I posted myself on some hair subreddit not too long ago and a lot of people said I was "handsome". Rn I don't look my absolute best, I have acne (not too bad, but I have always had it), dark circles under my eyes, my hair's pretty messy, i like it like that (I prefer to look more "soft" and a little messy rather than super clean and really masculine), tho I've been growing it out to a more medium length so rn its kinda awkward looking, I got a haircut very recently where I asked for layers, he shortened my fringe more than I wouldve liked but kept the length everywhere else mostly the same, so it doesn't look as good as it did before the cut imo.

These spaces claim that the only men who can have success with women are those who are purely genetically gifted. According to this view, you have to be tall and handsome. By “handsome,” they mean having a sharp jawline, perfect facial thirds, excellent facial harmony, a full head of hair, and, of course, low body fat. Otherwise, you are supposedly destined to be alone. These men are known as “moggors.” Even money and status supposedly do not matter or help with success with women.

I find this hard to believe because the overwhelming majority of relationships I see, even among the younger adult population aged 22 to 35, involve men who have at least three out of the four traits I mentioned: being out of shape, having belly fat, having visible hair loss, and being of average height. In all the spaces I have been in, university, the gym, various workplace offices, sports clubs, and even my experience in high school, not even 10% of the men I knew who were in relationships were “moggors.” I also see this at my local preschool, where most of the men I see collecting their children are overweight to varying degrees and are balding.

There is also an idea in these spaces that men literally have no standards and will commit to any girl who shows interest. Most men I knew who claimed to be single and found it “impossible to date” were actually getting attention from women. They simply weren’t interested in dating the women they were attracting.

One of my mates is severely obese, I mean around 500 lbs. Even he was matching with quite a few overweight women on dating apps who were still much slimmer than he was, and they wanted to meet up. He just flat out refused every time, which I found pretty funny.

I knew an Irish guy who had basically given up on dating. One of our friends married a woman from Thailand, and another married a woman from China. He was getting a lot of attention from women from these types of countries, but he said he simply wasn’t attracted to women from those regions and would rather stay single.

When you try to debunk these ideas in online spaces, what makes them so difficult to argue against is that they have defeatism built into them. There is an ugly man with a pretty woman? Well, then he is rich and I am not, so I can’t do it like him. He is poor? Then he isn’t autistic like I am, so I can’t do it like him. And so on. You can do this forever, pretty much. If even that fails, you can simply say that the relationship is a freak accident and use that as an excuse for why it won’t happen to you.

The black pill is not an actual ideology or position; it is a neurosis that likely belongs on the depressive spectrum. I have dysthymia, and I have experienced the belief in several different “black pills” about topics completely unrelated to dating. These beliefs are pathological and therefore not rational.

They actually advise men that they should not even bother trying to pursue women unless they are a “mogger.” From seeing this from the outside, it is almost as though the men in these spaces are trying to mateguard women. They seem to love the idea that men are helpless and should give up on life, and there is almost a fetishistic element to it.

Interestingly, this is also a form of gaslighting toward women who have struggled to find a long term partner. I knew a lot of women who struggled with this.

Hey there,

I am a 31 year old dude with chronic pain(since I am 8 years old) and no relationship experience, due to the sickness causing my pain I spent most of my 20s depressed and alone with extreme self esteem issues. Not to speak of the childhood with bullying at school for being the crippled kid, you get the idea. I basically started puberty with the idea nobody will ever love me.

Earlier this year I started a journey of self improvement after a woman actually showed interest in me, I blew it of course and she ghosted me but this kind of showed me the last additional bit of hope I didn't know I had still in me.

Now half a year has passed, I got my body into a rather nice shape with dieting and kickboxing which ironically lessened my physical pain quite a lot. And I force myself into social situations whenever one shows up. I don't know if I am imagining things but it seems people are much friendlier to me recently, I dunno. But all in all I feel better in both body and mind.

Now comes my problem: Sometimes I feel like I am way too late to do all of this, like, I am 31 years old. Becoming better is all nice and good but it will not make up for the fact that I have basically no experience in relationship things. I catch myself demotivating myself with thoughts like "Maybe if I'd have done this five years earlier." or "I wasted too much time being depressed and useless." or simply telling myself that this will never work out.

It gives my newfound confidence quite a hit when this happens and I don't want to fall nack into this depressed mindset, I cannot afford another therapy and I just wanted to ask some of you for advice.

I hope the text wasn't too horrible, english is my second language. Thank you for reading.

So I’ve calmed down a bit and took this subs advice. The next time I saw “Rachel” I told her I made a mistake and was sorry. I also added that I was still interested if she was.

Amazingly, she said she was. As long as I didn’t pull stupid shit like this anymore.

I’ll admit that I was pretty shocked that she was STILL interested after how I treated her this weekend, but at least this time I just went with it instead of self sabotaging. We couldn’t exactly do anything right then and there (we were at a jam session at a bar after all). What we DID do though was head to the outside of the bar and talk for a little bit about expectations and logistics.

It turns out she’s put a lot of thought into what she wants out of an FWB. I’m sure she expects me to do the same.

Long story short: Our work/social schedules don’t align again until Saturday, so she’s coming over to my place then.

It’s just amazing to me that she’s agreed to this whole thing in the first place. I don’t look like a supermodel and I’m definitely not a social butterfly, so most likely I’m just incredibly lucky.

And I’m not naive enough to think there WON’T be issues or that this will even last very long. I’m just trying not to focus on that right now.

So I guess it all worked out? And I REALLY gotta thank this sub for talking some goddamn sense into me.

When I was 16, I was not that popular in school. I had some people to hang out with, but we weren’t really close. Ever since then, I have felt that I would like to date, meet people, and get into a relationship. I wanted to have sex; I wanted to know what I was missing out on. I wanted love and so much more, and I was waiting for it.

When I turned 18 during COVID, I thought the time had finally come and that it would happen. But it didn’t. I became older, went to college, and am now close to 24 and nearly finished with college. I have never found love, never had sex, never kissed anyone, or held hands in a romantic manner.

As for me, I am not particularly unpleasing to look at (or so I have been told) nor particularly unpleasant to be around. I am rather hygienic: I shower twice a day, shave, and use cologne with a scent that I think suits me. I love going out, doing things, and meeting people. I dance salsa and bachata and attend a lot of socials. I go clubbing from time to time. I am the leader of a debating organisation. I run frequently with the local running club. I go to the gym twice a week to keep myself in shape. I go hiking with the Scouts, but I also love some nerdy things, like card games such as MTG and other board games. I am also passionate about creating my own board games. I like writing fantasy literature and drawing illustrations. Due to my love of telling stories, I also lead several D&D campaigns.

For the most part, I gravitate towards people, but I have a hard time fitting into new environments. I also like having time to myself and, as my hobbies show, being creative.

I have tried all sorts of ways to meet people. I joined dating apps and got a lot of matches, as well as several dozen dates, also several dozen second ,third,forth dates but they always faded into nothing. I learned dancing, attended socials, went clubbing, and met a lot of people, but still nothing happened. I went to house parties, got drunk, and hit on people, but again, nothing happened. I once woke up in a girl’s bed, but she told me that nothing had happened. I tried therapy and accepting my situation, but I was never much of a quitter. I tried waiting for it to happen, and it didn’t.

I am not sad or desperate for anyone. I am just curious: What could I do now, given that nothing I have tried has led to anything?

(I had to remove it first because of some tipos)

Sorry because this will be a long post

I am a 20 year old male virgin who has never been in a romantic relationship with a woman. I attend university and work full time in the summer so i’m not a complete NEET like many incels. I have been diagnosed with adhd and depression and I take medication for it. I suspect I may also be autistic (although I failed to meet the clinical criteria as a kid). Like many neurodivergent kids, I always felt “different” growing up and struggled socially. I was bullied quite heavily in grade school but still had some friends, including female friends. However, dating has always eluded me.

Due to my social struggles, I spent a lot of time on the internet. I discovered incel/looksmaxxing forums and although I have never hated women, I still agree with some tenets of the blackpill, namely that looks are extremely important. I witnessed this first hand after I lost weight and got my acne under control. People are generally nicer to me, even in completely non-romantic contexts. I am at a point where I might be considered average looking, although I still think I objectively look hideously ugly.

This leads to my experience with women. I have never asked a woman out in person and I don’t really know how so at the start of this summer I downloaded Hinge and Tinder. I fully expected to get 0 matches due to my looks but surprisingly over the course of the summer I got around 60 or 70 (probably helps that I am 6’2, even if that’s superficial). This has led to around 8 first dates. On dates I try to follow the common advice of just talking to women like they’re people so I ask questions about their degree, job, family, life etc while trying to add in sweetness/chivalry. I also try to throw in some compliments and light banter and I avoid anything sexual. I think it’s crazy to expect too much on a first date so I’ve been willing to go on a second date with all but 1 of my dates. Despite this, when I ask for a second date, I get ghosted or I receive a generic response such as “I had a lot of fun and I think you’re a really good/sweet/smart/funny guy but unfortunately I don’t feel the spark/connection”. I even had one woman offer to be friends but I declined.

The most recent rejection I received was the most devastating and led me to feel extremely depressed and hopeless. I matched with this woman on Hinge and we instantly hit it off over text as we shared many of the same interests. She started calling me “love” and “good boy” and although I thought it was way too early for that I went along because that was the first time i’ve ever received that kind of affection. After a few days of texting she asked me to come over for sex late at night (despite having never met me irl before). I told her I was a virgin and she was surprised but didn’t care. I (foolishly) declined because we would’ve had to do it in my car and I had work the next day. I suggested an alternative night and she agreed. Unfortunately, she got her period before that night so she told me we couldn’t have sex. I reassured her that was ok and that I still want to see her because I valued her as a person. She was delighted that I wasn’t pushy due to her past experiences and during texting she called me her “dream guy”. Anyways, that night comes and we greet each other with a kiss (my first kiss). We drive to go do the date activities and in my view I had an amazing time. At the end of the night I asked (verbally) if I could give her a goodnight kiss and she agreed which led to making out in my car. I drop her off and drive home feeling wanted for the first time in my life. The next morning she sends me this text: https://imgur.com/a/Y2TljMq

I was absolutely devastated since again, never received that much affection. The excuse feels like such a lie because one, her profile said long-term relationship and why would you be on a DATING app if you weren’t ready to date and two, if I truly was her dream guy that stuff wouldn’t matter. And it was nothing I did wrong? If I truly did nothing wrong she would’ve gone on a second date. Also I can see no logical reason why she would consent to all those goodbye kisses if she wasn’t feeling it. The only logical conclusion is I unknowingly coerced her and I feel like such a disgusting r*pist since that means the only way I can get affection is through coercion and that makes me hate myself even more. I just don’t understand what horrible sin I committed to go from “dream guy who I wanna kiss” to “I want nothing to do with you” in only 2 hours. Since then, I have deleted my dating apps since I feel heartbroken.

Every single date has basically gone in the same way: they get excited over text, are excited when first seeing me (even going so far as initiating a hug), and then (usually) I can tell that they get slowly disappointed, leading to a generic rejection. This leads me to another tenant of the blackpill I agree on, which is that genetics can lower your quality of life, or in some cases, ruin it through no fault of your own. Such is the case for neurodivergent conditions. Studies show that neurodivergent people (especially autistics) are at higher risk of things like unemployment, depression, suicide, abuse, chronic loneliness, etc… In the context of relationships, a meta-analysis conducted by Motamed et al. (2025) found only 16.1% of autistic men were in relationships. There are also studies suggesting that neurotypicals subconsciously dislike neurodivergent people and that this dislike disappeared when neurotypicals solely read the words themselves. I can’t help but believe that this is exactly what is happening with my dates. I suspect that these women may have had a pleasant time, but their nervous systems subconsciously detected my neurodivergence and got the ick, thus failing to trigger romantic attraction.

I won’t pretend like i’m some social savant but I generally haven’t struggled this hard to make friends before. It seems like no matter what I do, I cannot generate the spark/connection/chemistry needed to elicit attraction. I’ve tried PUA techniques like push pull and those haven’t worked. I’ve tried just being myself and talking to women as if they were people (which they are) and that hasn’t worked. I’ve tried flirting techniques such as the triangular gaze method and that hasn’t worked. I just don’t understand how everyone my age who is in a relationship can somehow intuitively perform the perfect combination of words, body language, vocal tone, and facial expressions to generate attraction. Dating just seems so illogical and I’ve basically given up since I could do everything “right” but still face endless rejection (and further ruin my self esteem on the way). I’ve always been a romantic person and wanted to find “my one” but i’m slowly coming to the terrifying realization that there’s a good chance that may never happen, and that scares the shit out of me. Is there any hope for me and if so how could I change my situation?

Look, I've never dated in my life and I'm just at home and I only go to the gym and school. I'm not good with girls and the last time I asked for a girl she was a lesbian and that made me very much discourage from continuing to seek relationships at school.

I usually frequent forums and social networks like YouTube, Quora, Reddit and discord are my main ones from time to time I post on 4chan on the question board and technology board but I have no hatred of women so much that the person I love the most is my mother and my sister and I give everything for them but I feel that I will never get a girlfriend no matter how hard I try.

And another thing that made me not get a girlfriend is because of my shyness in terms of losing in a relationship I never managed to do this because every time I tried I paralyzed there and many times she just left and every time this happens I feel like a total rubbish and after that I gave up on this business and I'm just following my life.

I think a big part of my issues from 18 to 22 was my belief that I could tell what’s woman was thinking before I even spoke to her.

If I made eye contact with a woman and she looked away, I was concerned I had just disgusted her and she was gonna tell all her friends about what a creepy weirdo freak she encountered that day.When I had a crush, my automatic assumption was that it was a fantasyland idea that she would even be remotely interested in exploring that. If I made a girl laugh my assumption was quite literally that she was so terrified of me she thought I’d physically harm her if she didn’t placate me.

At around 23 I realized how ridiculous that was. How?

I ACTUALLY GREW A PAIR AND SPOKE TO WOMEN LIKE HUMAN BEINGS.

I think even now both men and women tend to see each other as concepts instead of people. They see their experiences and everything they’ve ever heard about the other gender and prescribe that to the person. But that’s what they are, just a person.

I’m being male oriented because this sub probably has a lot more men than women, but this goes out to them too. Instead of building up all of these ideas and assuming you “know men” well enough to predict their reactions and thoughts, FUCKING TALK TO THEM.

Everyone is a human being with their own independent thoughts. Some of them suck. Some men are fucking monsters, some women are demons. Some men are stupid, some women are morons. And some men are amazing, and some women are fantastic. But if place every failure/anxiety you’ve had about the opposite gender onto anyone you interact with you set yourself up for failure.

Hey all. I took all the comments in my last post to heart, about how I needed to be kinder to myself, and Ive fully started to realize just how needlessly cruel I've been to myself. I was like my own abuser in a way. I was saying things, I'd never say to another person about myself, and I was keeping myself locked in misery, just like the Incel echo chamber was.

I think what fully got me to realize how much of a monster I've been to myself was so simple, but it was just imagining someone else in my situation and how I'd respond to them. Obviously if show them sympathy but I couldn't show myself sympathy because... Reasons apparently.

My next step is to keep on fighting my self hatred. It's like a bully inside my mind, that doesn't want me to remember that my friends and girlfriend care for me, and that I'm not the worthless sack of shit I feel like sometimes. I know I need therapy too even more now, and honestly I can't wait for it. I want this asshole out of my head.

I feel like online and in my real life, I’m just inundated with a large amount of women that hate men. Not hate us in the same way incels hate women. But the language I see feels pretty reminiscent.

I constantly see women on Reddit swearing off dating because they believe that 95% of men are just bad people. I see constant justification for viewing all men as potential threats. I have seen in this sub people saying the majority of men are at best rape apologists.

Then when it comes to actual physical attraction and sex, it seems like women just don’t like men or like sex with men. Like legitimate married women saying they could go without sex with their husbands for the rest of their lives because “women just aren’t attracted to men in that way”. Whereas for men it seems like a thing they would consider a need in a relationship. And maybe I’m mistaken and thinking you need sex in a relationship is toxic. But it just feels like whiplash from having to learn that sex isn’t something only men want to then being told by women that it’s only something men want and something women put up with.

I’ve never been the type of incel that’s hated women. Maybe I grew up with some regressive views I had to unlearn, but I think that we all do as a byproduct of living in a patriarchal society, but I feel like I’ve never seen open hatred of women outside of the darkest most disturbed corners of the internet.

Even in my personal life with my female friends they will tell me that I’m “one of the good ones”. And it’s really demoralizing to see. Especially since I’m a black man and I’ve been called “one of the good ones” in that way as well and it rings the same bells. Everything we do is a red flag for domestic violence or disrespect. I’ve seen women agreeing that if a man eats too fast or doesn’t share food it’s a sign he’s going to mistreat you. Or that if a man in a relationship it should be constant sacrifice to ensure the woman is always happy, but if you’re constantly sacrificing it’s also controlling and manipulative.

If you pay for a date it’s you attempting to make her feel indebted to you, but if you don’t pay you’re a bum. Men taking an interest in more “feminine“ interests is performative and an attempt to lure in women to mistreat them, but if a man has only traditionally male interests it’s because he hates women. Nothing is ever right because everything we do is bad.

I’m not trying to act like men are the most oppressed group in society but it does get hard to see a constant flow of people telling me that because I was born male that I’m bad or dangerous. Especially when if you point out the generalization it’s assumed you’re defending yourself because you are one of the bad or dangerous men.