I am a 34 year old man who has zero romantic experience. Never had a girlfriend, been on a date or experienced any kind of physical intimacy.
I have had a very negative self concept as long as I can remember to the point of not looking at mirrors and avoiding having my picture taken.
I think my negative self concept started with my childhood. I was born with a birth injury and spent most of my childhood in hospital. By the time I was allowed to go to school aged 10, I was behind my peers physically and socially. I was bullied everyday and was too physically weak to stand up for myself, told "nobody loves you" and "you will die a virgin".
I have been trying since I was 13. I would say around the age of 17 I started to become worried that something was wrong with me as I saw my peers seemingly just leap from one romantic experience to another effortlessly.
I became more self aware, began journaling, using affirmations, meditation and thought that I would finally worthy of beginning my love life at University. The advice I had received over the years was "love will find you", "it will happen eventually", "there is someone for everyone".
I worked on myself on multiple levels during my years at University; physically, mentally, spiritually, socially. I began going to the gym a few times a week, I got out of my shell socially, partied and joined many social clubs. I saw a therapist to talk about my many childhood wounds and I began to develop my spiritual side, becoming aware of the close relationship between my thoughts and reality.
The first year was a period of real growth but in my second year I moved into a house shared with a bunch of other guys and everything started to go downhill. They were all attractive popular guys and the guy who's room was next to mine had women literally fighting over him. For two years I listened to his prolific love life every night through the wall to the point I would spend some nights at the 24/7 University library just to get some sleep. The subject of my lack of a love life would come up when they had women around, all of the shame of my teenage years came back but this time it was worse because I had really tried to work on myself only to end up with even more shame and self loathing.
Throughout this period I had numerous crushes or you could say SP's mainly from school. Often a girl who I shared a class with or a friend of a friend but I only experienced rejection. Since my mid 20's I have fluctuated between periods of depression and optimism but lately the overwhelming is one of numbness towards my reality.
For the past year I have been focusing on scripting, trying to rewrite past failures, humiliations and rejections as not being a comment on my worthiness. However, I am still learning to let go of the 3D. Whenever I go outside and see couples I feel reminded of how far away the simple act of going out with your SP is for someone like me. I remember going out on valentines day last week and walking past restaurants, seeing couples having dinner while feeling pathetic.
Sorry for the word salad, no chatGTP here but I have been lurking for a while thinking of how to word this post.