Hello! This is my first time posting here.

For background on myself, I’m a 25M in the U.S who’s about to graduate college. Up until this point in my life, I have had virtually no success in the dating world. None whatsoever. It’s always felt like this elusive, foreign language that I could never fully wrap my head around. Middle school, high school, college—I never had the formative experiences most of my peers did, and now I’m in adulthood just trying to mentally process where to even begin.

The closest I’ve ever been to a relationship was 10 years ago, in 2016. It was with a girl I met through my closest friend irl. She initiated with me and we instantly hit it off. Like I did everything right and attracted her. There was a girl I had been talking to online before that, but things fell apart since she lived in the U.K, and so I was kind of desperately wanting to fill the void. But with this girl, we love bombed each other for a solid 3-4 months and hung out regularly. Eventually though, I didn’t make a move fast enough and so she got back with her ex. Since then, I’ve really just been too sucked into school, my career, the pandemic, family issues, and just overall financial insecurity to really have the bandwidth to try dating again.

Now that I’m graduating college and have a job lined up, I want to shift my focus and really put myself out there again. The only problem is how radically things have changed in 10 years. Online dating seems to be the norm, and most people my age are already so much more experienced than I am when it comes to sex and relationships. It’s daunting. I feel like no one will have patience for me if I do manage to get lucky and find someone. That or I’ll constantly be compared to exes during that person’s “wild phase”. Most people on any dating app seem to be insanely toxic.

Another issue is escalation for me. Like I can talk to women perfectly fine and banter, but it’s interpreting signs that she is open to escalation beyond a surface level friendship I have a lot of trouble identifying. I’m very shy and reserved, and don’t want to risk being labeled a creep or worse. That’s what holds me back the most I’d say. How do you know when to escalate?What do you even say? Do most people just outright say “Hey, do you wanna date?” It seems so cringy to me, idk. There’s so much conflicting advice on how to text, when to text, when not to text, etc.

Looks-wise, I don’t think I’m that bad looking. I’m kind of skinny for my age, and have really dry skin. But other than that I sincerely think I’m an interesting guy. I have an interesting life I’ve built for myself that I’d really like to share with someone special. It’s just a matter of finding the right social circle where I’d be most likely to find my type: artistic, weird, creative, open-minded, and who shares my deranged, dark sense of humor. That and someone who won’t post every aspect of our life together on social media. I don’t really know how I can find that kind of person in the city I’ll be working in, which is mostly blue collar, older, religious, and located in a deeply red state. I probably won’t be able to move somewhere with better prospects until I’m close to 30.

I’m mainly just posting here to hear stories from other late bloomers who didn’t really throw themselves out there until their late 20s and even early 30s. Is it true that dating gets easier in your 30s as a man if you grinded hard throughout your 20s? What lifestyle changes did you make to find someone?