#most emotionally unavailable guy ever feels love and affection and doesn't know what to do with it

[spocks-kaathyra]

born to cuddle everyone I love all the time forced to live in a society where casual platonic affection is socially unacceptable and be too scared to challenge that notion

[a-little-nerdy-dude-with-wings]

"Millennials and Gen Z are waiting until their late 20s and early 30s to say “I do.”

I've seen this statement be the headline for many articles over the past 10 years.

However in my case it is the most untrue fact I've ever been told as I've just come across the sixth engagement announcement from someone my age this week.

And it seems that with each announcement, the person in question grew more and more related to me, the last being two of my friends and roomates from university.

This was obviously an engagement I knew would happen one day but I just didn't expect it so soon, especially during a period where everyone I know is either getting engaged, married or having a baby.

This very same week my eldest brother has had his third child and my other elder brother is sorting out the last of his wedding preparations.

Meanwhile what am I doing? Well... I attended comic con dressed as Roman Roy yesterday and bought yet another funko pop? And today I watched and read Bridgerton non-stop. So yeah, I'm doing jusssst great.

I used to consider the headline of this rant a comfort. I used to take the analogy that with me being 24, I'm not even in my "first season of friends" yet and that I have plenty of time. There's no rush!

And yet everyone I know and mostly people younger than me seem to either have a house, a child or a lifelong partner.

Whilst I'm in my room in my parents house, surrounded by my scattered clothes on the floor.

It doesn't help that I've been watching so much Bridgerton, as me being four and twenty and approaching five and twenty has sparked the fear of early spinsterhood amidst this engagement boom that seems to be happening in my social circles.

But it's not like I'm not trying.

I have been dating, it just hasn't been going very well.

I try the dating apps, but usually the guy might be somewhat good looking, but have no personality. Or the guy seems alright but then bombards you non-stop with text messages. And then they ghost you/break things off when they get bored.

One guy asked me how I spent my new years eve three separate times in the same conversation. Wanting my attention all the time and yet not listening to what I'm saying at all. He broke things off the next day.

But things might be looking up, I've started seeing this guy who is honestly the most handsome man I've ever gone on a date with. He's also the best kiss I've ever had.

But he can be a bit forward in his texts and I worry that as I'm not quite like that, he'll get put off or bored. I worry that once I tell him that my string of bad luck with guys and you know, the isolation that covid caused, means that I don't have much experience with intimacy, he'll take off.

I also worry that I'm not attracted to him at all and that my worries over everyone else figuring their lives out and watching way too many romantic dramas, has me being influenced into the idea of love, rather than actually being attracted to someone.

This has been my main problem with dating. They could be the nicest person ever and I think I like them, and then they reciprocate their feelings and suddenly I feel nothing.

For the past 6 years I've felt nothing and it kills me. I've entertained every possibility, am I not attracted to guys? Am I asexual? Demisexual? Is it my autism that affects things? Am I just scared of taking that next step of physical and emotional intimacy? Am I just feeling fomo? Am I emotionally unavailable/immature? Do I only like unattainable people such as fictional characters or actors/actresses? (believe me i've read the master doc and yet i still do not know)

I've felt love before and I'm desperate to feel it again. But I'm scared that with this new guy, who I think I had a nice time with and was so stunned by his beauty that I had to force myself to concentrate on what he was actually saying rather than just stare at his face,

I'm scared that it's just a delayed start to the neverending cycle and that soon enough, I'll be alone again whilst even more people get engaged.

Let's see how this goes.

But in the meantime, can people my age just stop with all the engagements? We've had quite enough in the past few weeks, you don't all need to do it at once.