Hello, this may not be the right subreddit for this post and this may be out of your field but basically I’m a 16 y/o guy and I’ve never had a girlfriend and I am quite obviously a virgin. Now, recently I’ve been kinda feeling a lot more pressure to get a girlfriend because all of my mates have already had one or multiple by now and I seem to really be on the outs. Whenever I look back to when a girl was into me I would for some reason want to be friends even if I liked the girl and I don’t understand why I would do this as it really ruined at least 2 potential relationships. For some reason I seem to be ashamed of my sexuality and always embarrassed/ feel guilty about liking girls and it is very weird. I think the reason for this is that I never really had a masculine role model as my dad was never that kind of dad (office job, religious, not in good shape(I still love my dad obv but I’m just starting to think he did not really raise me/teach me how to be a man in the world)) and my parents never talked to me about girls/ sex but I would get teased about “liking XYZ girl” which is pretty normal I mean it’s what dad’s do but for some reason this really got to me. ANYWAYS I guess what I am trying to say is that I want to start feeling comfortable about the fact that I am a man and that I want to lose my virginity to a girl who will benefit me in a meaning relationship and stop being so confused about my feelings all the time.

I apologize if this post was confusing to read but quite honestly I am very confused at this stage in my life so I’m just trying to express feelings I’ve been holding in for a long time.

TL; DR 16 y/o guy never had a girlfriend because I always felt ashamed about liking girls for reasons I never understood. How do I move on from how I was in the past and become a confident guy, comfortable with my own masculinity.