Ask HN: Words of encouragement for someone lost in life?
Ok, from the sound of it, a big (the biggest?) source of your unhappiness is the lack of a romantic relationship. I don&#x27;t have a quick or easy solution to offer, but I do have some personal experience to share and some perspective to offer. Apologies in advance for any graphic descriptions or colorful language that follow.<p>I was a virgin until 34. In fact, I had never kissed a girl until I met the one who would eventually become my wife, nor had I really ever been on a romantic date with anyone up to that point. She is the only romantic&#x2F;sexual partner I&#x27;ve ever had (and if I&#x27;m very lucky and work hard at it, I hope that will still be true on my deathbed). So if you manage to go on one real date or kiss one person in the next 11 years, you will have beaten me! So that&#x27;s something you can try to shoot for.<p>As you can probably imagine, from my late teens all the way to my early thirties, I experienced and accumulated a lot of anguish and unhappiness stemming from the lack of relationship success. But all of that quickly melted away once I got into a relationship. Well, I actually did have pretty severe performance anxiety with my girlfriend&#x2F;future wife for about a month after our relationship turned physical. But she was amazingly patient with me, and now we have three kids together and (still) a vigorous sex life (people who have young children can tell you that&#x27;s no small feat). Again, if you manage not to lose your erection the first 30 times you try to have sex with a girl, you will beat me there as well.<p>Ok, so all this isn&#x27;t meant as a (very) humble brag about how I turned my pathetic life around and now have a sexy wife and a wonderful life of endless orgasms. I don&#x27;t have any books or podcasts to offer. Not even a newsletter. The point is that, my life before wasn&#x27;t actually bad. I was just what used to be called a &quot;late bloomer&quot;. But apparently late bloomers are not ok anymore. Now the message in society is that if you aren&#x27;t humping like mad by 17, then there&#x27;s something wrong with you, and you&#x27;re being left behind by all the guys who are drowning in pussy (or gals in dick, or any permutation&#x2F;combination thereof). That&#x27;s some grade A bullshit that permeates every facet of American life, from movies to television, to social media, to music, to news, and especially to all those scientific sounding bullshit studies about how many (self reported) partners everyone has bagged by 20&#x2F;30&#x2F;40&#x2F;50 (when actually it&#x27;s the 60+ folks living in retirement communities that are banging like rabbits and passing out STDs like Halloween candy). All of it is just utter crap of the highest order, but together they create this endless soul-sucking anxiety in our society that we&#x27;re not getting as much sex as the next guy or gal and therefore represent some kind of a Darwinian dead end not worthy of continued existence. But the truth is, so many relationships are actually quite terrible, in that the people involved really don&#x27;t care that much about each other and know that the relationships won&#x27;t last. Yet they get into them out of FOMO or stay in them out of inertia. Yes, they&#x27;re getting physical pleasure, but there&#x27;s actually a pretty heavy psychic cost for being in numerous relationships that are disposable or ultimately go nowhere. Not to mention the opportunity costs of being constantly in mediocre to bad relationships and thus missing out on potentially great ones that come along.<p>So my point is, don&#x27;t buy into the bullshit narrative on sex that we have all internalized since before puberty. If you don&#x27;t have a romantic partner, it&#x27;s not the end of the world. It&#x27;s just not your time yet. Maybe you&#x27;re a late bloomer like me. There&#x27;s nothing wrong with that. There&#x27;s a lot of good advice of all sorts in this thread, but the best ones are always about working on yourself for your own sake. Once you can find some sense of self satisfaction in really being who <i>you are</i>, then those other relationships will come. I know it sounds like some Kumbaya bullshit, but just because it&#x27;s trite, doesn&#x27;t mean it&#x27;s not true. There&#x27;s really nothing that kills a social&#x2F;romantic relationship like a fixation on oneself, whether it be narcissism or self-pity&#x2F;hatred. When you feel better about yourself, every social interaction will no longer be about your own perceived inadequacies. You&#x27;ll have the mental bandwidth to really engage with others and to think about and care about who they are and what they have to say. That&#x27;s how you make real friends and attract the kinds of people that you want to have deep, long-term romantic relationships with.<p>Good luck, young man. I think there&#x27;s a good chance your life will turn out alright, if you will take the time to live it. Being in too much of a hurry usually leads to bad outcomes, no matter if it&#x27;s running, driving, or living. And one last thing, the movie <i>The 40-Year-Old Virgin</i> actually gave me a lot of encouragement when I was a 30-Year-Old virgin. It&#x27;s pretty funny and well-acted, and while not terribly realistic, it lifted some of the burden of anxiety I was carrying. It made me think that I still had plenty of time.