>>82418089 (OP)
I'm going to turn 30 this year and I have never been in a relationship and it's very isolating. People say "just have friends instead," but being romantically inexperienced makes it harder to bond with friends, because my friends all talk about their romantic relationships and I don't really have anything to contribute to the conversation.
One of my friends joked, "Trump's base is young men who have never been on a date." At the time, I had never been on a date. And even though I'm not a man, and even though I'm not a Trump supporter, it sucks to be reminded that even people I like and respect routinely use romantic inexperience as an insult. The thing that drives me craziest is that 10 years ago, everyone said, "Oh, you're so young, you have so much time, don't even worry about it, I PROMISE you'll meet someone." And then I blinked and suddenly I wasn't quite as young, and people were saying, "If you're in your thirties and have never been in a relationship, that's a red flag." And then if I express a desire for a partner, people just tell me that it's better to be single than to be in a bad relationship. Which, sure, but also, if I had chosen to be in a bad relationship rather than be perpetually single, those people would find that completely normal. Because I stayed single rather than date people I wasn't interested in, now people think there's something wrong with me for never having been in a relationship. Like, I followed your advice. I did what you told me to do: I chose being single over being in a relationship just for the sake of being in a relationship. And now you act like I'm a leper because of it.