I’m 24 years old and embarrassed that I’ve never dated anyone. How do I meet a girl?
I have a bit of an embarrassing situation: I’m 24, single, a lesbian, and I’ve never been with anyone! I have had depression for a few years – a combination of family losses and years caring for my terminally ill mother, only going out to work. It’s been a lot, and I’m only just starting to feel better.
People I know either met someone in school and are happily coupled up or they were able to have wild “coming-of-age” experiences at university. Lots of sex, club nights and friends. I’ve got life experience some of those people haven’t had. But I feel as though I missed out on that opportunity to practise dating and sex.
It seems that to meet someone nowadays it’s through work, apps or on a night out. I work in a male-dominated industry. There are no gay bars within 70 miles of me, but I’d go if I had lesbian friend to go with. I’ve tried apps. They tend to be geared to hook-ups, straight couples looking for threesomes or older folks looking for “the one”.
I don’t really know how to meet women now. I like nature, arts, comedy, theatre and film. Am I going about this all wrong? How do I meet a girl?
Eleanor says: First, I can’t see anything embarrassing here. I know it can feel like life has a narrative we’re meant to move through at certain ages, but you’re telling me that instead of breaking hearts or throwing up at university, you were taking care of someone you loved as they passed? What about this could be anything other than a credit to you?
We’re all on different timelines for love and fun. That’s especially true in queer dating, where people arrive brand new at 30, or 60, or after whole heterosexual marriages, feeling versions of the “inexperience” you’re feeling now. A lot of the people you’d look around at in a lesbian bar who seem so confident remember very well their own wobbly-Bambi-legs feeling.
It sounds as though you feel you’ve missed out on a big educational experience. You’re right that there’s stuff about dating you can only learn by doing – what you like, how to ask for it, how to reject without wounding, how to tolerate rejection yourself. But the “wild coming-of-age” period can be a pretty rough way to learn it. It might look like a relaxed, fun, formative education, but a whole lot of people look back on those years as a wretched furnace they only just got out of – a lot of people don’t even learn anything useful from it! They come away with big scars on their hearts and no explanation for why patterns keep repeating.
To your mission: how do you meet a girl? Without free time or queer spaces it’s undeniably harder. But you only need to meet one or two people for a whole new social world to unfold. I think the app-ification of dating can obscure this – thousands of faces in a fast-moving sea makes it feel like you have to jump in or be left behind by the current. In fact, a perfectly rich “dating life” can be half a dozen people you meet over years. It can unfold from being out in the world; not “doing dating”, but going to the stuff you like and making friends who’ll introduce you to new people.
In other words, if you want a good dating life, it can really help to focus on a robust social and friendship life first. It’s an organic way into new connections. And it means that if the dates don’t pan out, at least your life is structured around being out with people you like, trying fun things. “Out” is the key; outside the house, outside the familiar, out there.
Lastly, big cities become hubs for queer dating for a reason. You might find it fun to deliberately take a trip into a queer-friendly city – use up a day off work, take a straight friend if you have to. It doesn’t need to be about hook-ups if that feels like a lot; a film club, a comedy club, derby.
The abundance of queerness and dating can feel like such fun when it has been missing. Even if you just do it for a day, or the occasional trip, it might enliven things and give you connections you can follow up later. Meeting in person first and staying in touch digitally later feels a lot more organic than the other way around.
So try not to feel that there’s some universal body of dating knowledge you’ve missed out on. Experience doesn’t teach unless you’ve decided to learn. You have plenty of time to design those experiences now.
The reader’s letter has been edited for length
