I want to share a bit about myself and why (I think) I've been unable to "get" a girlfriend. And I would like to hear any thoughts you all might have regarding anything.
I am yet another who has never been in a romantic relationship, however I am in the best place in my life I've ever been in (making decent money at a job I enjoy in a town I don't hate, picking up new hobbies like latin dancing and hot yoga and just generally feeling better about my life and where I'm at) and I've been thinking a lot about relationships. Not just how much I want one, but what it means to be in a relationship and what roles the partners play (regardless of gender or sexual orientation). I imagine lots of circumstantial issues and how best to communicate to resolve the issues mutually, and this is how I have come to view romantic relationships–a mutual co-mingling of responsibilities, ambitions, etc. Essentially a "coming-together" of two people. This is my thinking after a couple years of serious consideration, however I have no experience, so I don't know if that's a proper way of looking at things.
Now a bit of a change in course as I would like to relate past experiences and the road that led to where I am now
I grew up in a very rural area. My house was in a valley in the middle of the woods, four miles from the main road, with a half dozen neighbors strewn along that unpainted single-lane bit of asphalt. The largest town in my county had a pop of 400 and my graduating class had 50 kids in it, everything is closed at sundown, internet service (beyond dial-up) was (and still is) entirely unavailable. Getting back to a romantic focus, it's the sort of place where everyone marries their highschool sweetheart and has kids at 20. My parents got divorced the summer between 8th and 9th grade, and my mother gathered up my sister and I and took us to a whole other state. Suddenly I was in a city with 800,000 people and my high school graduating class had 750 students. Big culture shock.
In any event (getting back to the main subject of relationships), throughout high school I had the same experience over and over. I would meet a girl in class/a club/whatever and we would hit it off, a few months would go by and we would be very fast friends, and then I would develop more serious romantic feeling for them. With five different girls this same basic story played out, and with each of them I would tell them what I was feeling and was met with rejection each time. One of them even laughed at me when I said I was falling for them. After all those rejections in high school I just sort of stopped trying when I went to college (in an entirely different state). I had several girl-friends and developed feelings for one of them, but never "laid it on the line" so to speak because I was so afraid of rejection.
After school I moved in with my dad in the same house I grew up in. It had been six years since I was there last and so all of my old friends were estranged. I tried to reconnect with a few of them, but things just sort of petered out and that was that. The area being as rural as it was, I never had the opportunity to experience any sort of night life or dating type scene, and just spent 2 1/2 years being frustrated and alone. Then I decided to go back to school (i had dropped out of that first college) and the year was 2021. So that didn't work out and I dropped out again, living in the small city that the college was situated in for the next 3 1/2 years. After my experiences in high school, and then not even having the opportunity to date/meet new people when I moved back to my birthplace, I was enbittered. I had an attitude that "well obviously I am unworthy of female attention, undesirable, and unlovable. Natural selection has spoken and I am doomed to be alone forever". After I dropped out of schoop the second time I just started working random jobs to support my extreme cannabis addiction and became something of a recluse.
At some point though, I realised that I was undesirable not becuase of some fault deep within myself, but because I never showered, my clothes were little more than rags, my only hobby was video games, and, most importantly, I WAS A RECLUSE. I laughed at myself a bit because OF COURSE I'm not meeting anyone when literally all I do is go to work and then come home. A lot of other realizations about my life gave me a kick in the pants too, and I sobered up, got a new job in a new town in a new state, and then went right back to being a recluse lol. I guess some habits are hard to break. So literally two months ago I noticed that I had slipped right back into my old ways (even though my mental state has been much much healthier) and that's why I decided to start taking dancing lessons (which I've always wanted to learn) and hot yoga–to get me the fuck out of the house and maybe find myself in social situations, perhaps even strike up a romantic relationship (but let's not be hasty, one thing at a time lol)
Anyway, I just wanted to share my experience so far and hear any advise/comments you folk may have.
Thanks!
Tl;dr past failures led to a fear of rejection and an embittered view of relationships in general. I started getting my personal life together and am now feeling ready to try and date, however with no romantic history I want to reach out and hear thoughts on how to properly view/think about the experience