Dear Em & Lo, I’m a Thirty-Something Virgin – Help!

Dear Em & Lo,

I’ll get straight to it: I’m in my early thirties and I’m a virgin. Not really by choice. It’s just never happened. It’s gotten to the point where I’m so worried what potential dates (and even platonic friends) will think if they find out, that I’m afraid it’s holding me back and I’ll end up dying along. It’s really starting to depress me. Help!

— Pre-Cat Lady

Dear PCL,

It’s great to wait for the right person for such an important life event. We’d even recommend waiting for love, however long that takes! But if you’ve made it to your thirties without making at least one serious connection with a like-minded human being–and you want to make this connection–then you’ve probably got some issues that need to be dealt with in therapy.

Do you have some social interaction problem–fatal shyness, insecurity, social ineptness, a mullet–that is preventing you from meeting people? Have you built up sex (and the person who gives it to you) to be this great, big, overwhelming, all-powerful, awe-inspiring ideal that can never be achieved unless the stars are aligned just so? (Prepare to be disappointed.) Are you a sexual person who has sexual desire and masturbates regularly? If not, you may have a hormonal situation that could be dealt with medically, or else perhaps you subscribe to an incredibly repressive religion that guilts the sex drive right out of you. Or perhaps you just think that nice girls don’t. (For the record, nice girls do.)

Whatever the case, it’s not the virginity holding you back–you’re holding you back. And it’s going to take some serious self-reflection to get to the bottom of why you’re not meeting people you’d even consider doing. Then it’s going to take some serious motivation to make the necessary changes to meet people you do want to do. Once you do that, read our advice on whether or not to tell him you’re a virgin.

Nice girls,

Em & Lo

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