I feel, due to issues like misogynist incel types, who turn their loneliness as fuel to be hateful, and the prevalent idea that having sex/being in a relationship conflates with being a cool/good person and if you don't have those than you are therefor not those, that expressing your struggles with feeling lonely and alienated from being single are seen as open game for contempt. So you end up just having to bottle all of it up, save for talking to like a therapist, unable to express your feelings or lived experience with those around you. I mean, I'm even posting from my alt out of fear of ridicule. Some chud seeing this and using it to say "see, these communists are loser virgins!"

But it does suck - being single and being lonely. I'm 23 and I've never been on a date, much less been in a relationship or had sex. It sucks to feel completely alienated from all your friends and others your age when they talk about their relationships or dating life, to not have the slightest clue what its like to feel the validation of knowing someone finds you attractive. Because, for all I know, literally no one ever has. It is something that has never been expressed to me. I've tried to explain this to very close friends in the past, ones I felt I could trust, and they just don't seem to be able to get it. They can't imagine what it's like to have never felt loved or appreciated in the way I've had to live with.

Reading all this you probably assume I'm some sort of maladjusted hermit nerd or something, but I'm not. I've always been socially active, outgoing despite the anxiety it caused, always forcing myself to try and put myself out there, even in the midst of the major, treatment resistant depression I've struggled with for years. I've spent probably hundreds of hours attempting to use dating apps over the last 6 years, only to break down and give up each time, worn down by swiping right (selectively, but not unrealistic - like the normal amount) on hundreds of people only to get a match like once every couple weeks, and them to never reply. I just don't know what more to do. I've done/do everything they say to do. Tried all the "methods." I be myself, but put in effort. I have hobbies and interests. I make friends and go to parties/group events. I don't look too hard. I look very hard. I try to live my life and wait for love to find me. I actively try to seek it out. But none of it works. Even my therapists in the past have outright told me I seem to just have bad luck. And it feels like the clock just keeps ticking, and everyday I'm still alone I become more and more of an outcast, a freak that's never had a super basic thing like a relationship that everyone else has. What's wrong with me? Am I really just that ugly?

But I can't tell anyone this. I can't complain about this anywhere. It's seen as unbecoming and pathetic. I have to just bow my head and accept my fate of being unwanted without resistance. Talk all you want about relationship problems, but talk about how cold it is to not even know what being hugged by someone who thinks you're pretty and you're a pariah. I think its because you remind people of how cruel life can be. How sometimes someone just isn't loved, even when they do everything that everyone else does to find love. How thin the line between what they have and what you don't have is. And it scares them. So we're not allowed to talk about it. I'm not allowed to say I'm lonely.