Being a late bloomer comes with inexperience, but it also comes with lots of scars and baggage. The term has also been weaponized of late, and that’s worth brining up.

I bring this up because as someone who’s a late bloomer myself, I’ve come to realize why there aren’t a lot of us around. Its difficult work, learning to put yourself out there when isolated habits are ingrained and you have to basically undo a lifetime’s worth of feeling rejected by everyone, insecure, like a loner and just not knowing how to deal with human relationships.

Being a late bloomer means you come with tons of emotional baggage, complex habits of self perception, a gap with how you express yourself and intimacy and so on. Again, getting out of this and learning so much of this for the first time is difficult work because you’re basically trying to re-wire internal lessons that more or less feel like they’ve been set in stone.

With that out of the way, I wanted to address two points brought up in these spaces that relate to being a late bloomer and why, frankly, the term has become weaponized:

(I will only focus on men here because while female late bloomers certainly exist and there are many, I don’t feel as comfortable discussing the psychology of how they impacts women (including negative impacts), so I don’t want to feel like I’m jumping the gun)

1. It becomes a route towards entitlement to some:

Because being a late bloomer comes with years of inexperience and internal damage, climbing out of that and integrating yourself is hard work. Problem is, because men have been socialized to treat women as a reward, many men use the early stages of coming out ‘late’ as a form of expecting a ‘reward’ for it. Problem is, what often isn’t recognized is that because these many years of isolation and reenforced inadequacy also means years of missing out on crucial experiences, meaning that people will feel weary about that and you might need to keep showing up as a person before anything else could happen. Even then though, nothing is a guarantee - working towards bettering yourself also means improving every other circumstance of your life. A woman isn’t a trophy waiting for you at the finish line, if a woman doesn’t emotionally connect and resonate with you (and if you’re a late bloomers, lots of people wont), she likely won’t feel the pull towards a relationship. She has her needs and her own emotional landscape, meaning her connecting with you isn’t a guarantee - if it isn’t compatible with yours, then so be it.

1. The attempt to justify targeting younger people with it:

And by that I mean targeting those in the early 20s range, often citing “well they lack experience too so we’re the same” as an excuse. This comes with a serious lack of self awareness because no, you’re not the same. I also feel I should call out a double standard as women closer to one’s age range are dismissed because they “have baggage” - guess what? Being a late bloomer is baggage, and baggage that most early 20 somethings aren’t emotionally equip to deal with. I’ve noticed lots of dudes dismiss this baggage. There is a lot of it - years of isolation, self doubt, reenforced negative self talk, missed personal milestones and so on will engrain emotional habits and tendencies that a younger person will just not know how to deal with. In other words, you’re not walking into the dating game fresh, you’re walking in with many scars, they’re not scars tied to heartbreak and breakups, sure, but they’re scars none the less, so most younger people are absolutely not equip to deal with them.

So now what? I just laid out a whole lotta negativity without much positive. It’s time I offered up some direct solutions, and I think two things needs to be done:

1. Accept the process and accept that it will take a ton of time. You’ll feel alone a lot, you’ll feel isolated, you’ll feel weight of it and often doubt yourself - but you also don’t have any other choice. The rewards will come if you keep putting the work (and by rewards I mean you’ll find people who will resonate with you, social activities you enjoy and so on), focus on building a life worth sharing (by that I mean an interesting life, not your income) and once you truly feel that, people you’re interested in will start to notice.

2. Put in the emotional work. You’re a damaged person. I was, and in many ways, still an a damaged person. Professional help, social groups, low stakes ways of seeing others and so on are all important. You need to learn the vulnerability of being around others as well as your own internal tendencies first. Figure out basic interpersonal dynamics, figure out how to maintain low stakes relations with others THEN maybe focus on the heavier, more romantic stuff.