I’m hiding the fact that I’m still a virgin and it’s devastating
So I’m almost 27F with a long history of mental issues. I’ve lost so many years of life and I’m so ashamed of my inexperience of everything, not just bedroom activities. I can’t talk about it with anyone, even with people that know me longer and maybe suspect this.
I’ve slowly been doing better in some areas in my life. I have a bigger social circle now, am healthier, have some good friends and I started to party and having fun more. I feel good sometimes. I’m going out more and I’m suddenly getting compliments, people treating me better in general and guys wanting to date me. It feels so uncomfortable. It’s like I need and am glad to hear the validation, but at the same time I don’t get happy when I hear it, I get rather sad and unresponsive.
I don’t have much experience with dating and I always started to feel so uncomfortable when they expressed love/touched me. I’m so messed up. I want to date, I have crushes, I have a desire to hook up. I’m just so uncomfortable the whole time. I get some weird confidence rushes but usually when I’m alone.
I get so ashamed when my friends are talking about their lives and I have nothing to contribute. I always talk about it in a really general way. Sometimes people ask questions like “how many guys did you sleep with” and I lie and feel so bad about it.
The other day one friend was talking about sleeping with a man and another friend asked me “wait, why don’t you ever talk about yours? It can’t be that you are still a virgin?” I said I just don’t want to talk about it and another friend defended me, but I just felt so humiliated and weird and stupid.
I’m so afraid of being discovered. I know they wouldn’t ridicule me, but just that they would know I haven’t done something that, in my head, “proves” that someone is capable of being intimate, socially normal and desired is so shameful.