Why isn’t he here yet?

thoughts on being an 29 year old virgin 

It’s been approximately 15 years since I first started being interested in boys. That’s pretty late, according to what I gather from current norms, but kind of average back then. My first crush is now married and has an uber cute little boy. We’re not in direct contact, but he’s kind of a local internet celebrity, so it’s really easy to find out what he’s up to.

I’ve had many crushes since then. Most of them are now either in a relationship or married. I know because I catch up with them sporadically, though mostly I just stalk them occasionally on facebook. I’ve moved on, though there was nothing tangible for me to move on from, really.

I’ve never had a boyfriend.

It’s an odd confession for a 29-year-old when every single girl twelve years and older now seems to have a boyfriend. Maybe not an official official boyfriend, but kind of an we-know-our-friends-know kind of boyfriend.

It’s partially because I’m of the I Kissed Dating Goodbye generation of church kids; though it’s really easy to kiss dating goodbye when no one is asking you out for dates.

Probably it’s partially because I’m a PK (that’s church slang for Pastor’s Kid) so that usually made things all kinds of levels of awkward.

Maybe it’s also mainly my fault:

I’m not all that good at that thing called “being a friend”.

I make friends easily enough — acquaintances, if you’re nit picky. I meet people, new people, rather regularly. I add them on facebook. I follow them on twitter. But I’m just not good at regularly connecting, interacting, talking, that whole sharing of lives thing. Sometimes I look at my twitter feed and go “oh wow. I last tweeted that person… last year.” I spend most of my time lurking, rather than replying.

The thing is, I’m a really private person, except when I’m writing - which is why my father often says that he has to read my blog to find out what I’ve been doing or thinking about. I just don’t normally talk about these things, which sometimes makes it awkward when I go out for dinner with friends. After a tiring night of trying to connect with people, I often wonder why I bother. I just want to go home and bury myself in a mound of blankets and snuggle up to a good book.

This is not a post on being introverted. There have been quite a lot of those floating around on the interwebs. But the fact still remains that in order to have a boyfriend, you need to be a friend first.

I don’t subscribe to the Hollywood myth of falling in love at first sight. Attraction at first sight, I believe. You tend to want to talk to people you’re attracted to. But attraction does not always follow through to love. Attraction doesn’t mean compatibility, it doesn’t dictate similar goals in life, it doesn’t indicate if this man will have a heart that beats in time with God’s.

I don’t believe in sex outside of marriage. I’m a True Love Waits kid who’s still waiting. It hurts. It sucks, believe me it does. There are lots of tearful nights involved, when you believe that nobody loves you because you’re just plain unlovable. There are the days when you stare at yourself at the mirror and ask if you’re really so fat and ugly that nobody wants to go out with you. But I don’t want to jump into bed with someone just because I may be missing out on something. I want it to be more meaningful than that. I believe there is more to a relationship than sex.

Call me old-fashioned, but I find commitment romantic. I like the permanency of a marriage and the building of a home. I’m also selfish; I want him to be all mine, forever — or at least until one of us dies. I don’t believe in divorce.

I never thought I’d reach the “grand old” age of 29 and still be single -correction: and still to have always been single. In my list of things to achieve before I turned 30 was the prerequisite “get married”. Getting married hints at the fact that you need to get engaged first, and before that to actually have a boyfriend. It’s going to be kind of hard to do that in one year when there isn’t even any suitor in the horizon right now.

I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t mind. I still sometimes wish for the man of my dreams to just appear before me and sweep me off my feet. But I know that’s not going to happen. It’s going to take time, it’s going to take effort. It’s going to take going against the grain and opening up to share my life with the people around me. It’s going to take choosing carefully my inner circle.

He isn’t here yet, but in time, he will be. This year I’m going to focus first on being a friend.