if you’ve never been in a relationship, watch this

If you clicked on this video, odds are you are looking for some sort of solace or understanding about why you have been single your entire life. You feel like you are defective. You feel like there's something you're doing wrong or there's something wrong with you.

You worry that it's never going to happen if it hasn't happened already. And I see these heartbreaking comments of people saying, "I am 19 years old and I've never been in a relationship. I'm 33.

I've never been in a relationship. I'm 49. I've never been in a relationship.

" I've seen like teenagers, like children saying like, "Why haven't I been in a relationship yet? What's wrong with me? " In this video, I want to run through some of the most common concerns and fears that people have and some ways you can try to reframe it for yourself to actually feel better about never having been in a relationship.

I also want to talk about why you should consider cutting out any sort of timeline that you feel like you are on and that you're behind because it's not helping you. And finally, we're also going to talk about why being in a relationship isn't all that's it's cracked up to be. I'm not going to talk you out of wanting one, but I do want you to understand why you want one and whether or not it's actually good for you.

If you're new here, my name is Charlotte and I make videos for people who want to get out of their own damn way. We talk about tools and strategies that can help you live the life that you love. If that sounds like something you're into, please subscribe and hit the bell and leave a comment.

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First, I want to address the people who say that I'm 19 years old and I've never been in a relationship. like they're barely out of school and they've never been in a relationship and they feel like there's something wrong with them. It is actually incredibly normal to go throughout your entire high school existence without ever having any romantic attention or any relationship.

There's a Pew Research study from about 10 years ago from 2015 that found that 64% of 13 to 17year-olds have never been in a romantic relationship. And you may say 13year-olds of course like they're not going to have had relationships. Okay, we can zoom in on that.

15 to 17 year olds, 44% said they had dating experience. So that means the majority of them don't. 56% have not had any dating experience.

You have created this idea in your head that you should have had relationship experience in high school. And that's just not accurate according to most people. Like you've created this benchmark for yourself that doesn't exist.

You're you're comparing yourself to Zenaia in Euphoria. And you may say, "Well, my friends are having like my friends are in relationships. " Yeah, your friends are the weirdos.

So, I really want you to question this idea of like just because you had no interest in high school doesn't mean anything was wrong with you. You're in the majority. Actually, we also don't talk about how not experiencing romantic attraction as a child will set you up for telling yourself these stories about yourselves as you get older.

And here's what I mean by that. When I was in high school, I wasn't really an option. Like, none of my friends ever said like, "Oh, are you talking to any guys?

Like, is there anyone that you're interested in? Like, who can we set you up with? " There was never any indication that my friends saw me as a option to boys or and these were girlfriends.

These were like my good friends. And I was just sort of seen asexual. I was seen as the mom of the group.

I was not seen as a person who could experience a relationship. And I took that on. I absorbed that.

I'm like, "Yeah, this is just who I am. " And somewhere along the way, I'm like, "That's okay. I'm okay with this.

We're going to live like I was still in my let's lose as much weight as I can era, you know, like we all go through that. " And I'm like, "One day I will get to the point where I can be in a relationship because I'll lose weight and like someone will like me cuz that's the problem here, right? Like that's the issue.

But until then, I'll be the smart girl. Like there's pretty girls and there's smart girls. I'll just be the smart girl.

Obviously, that is a false dichotomy. That's not true. You can be both pretty and smart.

But I was a teenager. I was a child. And that's the conclusion I came to.

And as a result of that, I didn't try. I didn't feel good about myself. I'm like, there's no point.

This isn't going to happen. I had fu written on my forehead. A few years later, I found out that there were some guys who were who thought I was cute.

I don't know to the extent they were interested in me, but like it just baffled me. I never thought anyone could be interested in me. I was like, "What?

Oh, okay. " I want you to question what stories you have told yourself. Like, oh, my friends don't see me this way and therefore I don't see myself this way.

Or there's never been anyone who's interested. Not necessarily true. They just haven't expressed interest.

They could be interested. Um, and so it is it is detrimental to you to tell yourself a story such as I am not attractive and I am never going to attract anyone because that is going to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. The next thing I wanted to bring up is you're not ugly, dude.

It has nothing to do with your looks. This is not about that. I see so many people in comment sections attribute their lack of a relationship status to their appearance.

It is not that simple. That's not the only thing that's going on. Now, I talk about this in more depth in this video if you want to check that out.

I'll link it above. I want you to do a thought experiment with me. Think of the hottest celebrity you can think of.

Like, say their name right now. Now, I guarantee you there's someone out there who does not find that person attractive. You think they're hot as f and another person is like, "Ew.

" So, beauty is absolutely subjective. Of course, there are beauty standards, but guess what? Those standards are very loosely defined because they change every 5 seconds.

and they change based on what corporations want to sell you. They are a very fickle thing. So, I wouldn't put too much weight in these beauty standards because if our relationships lasted as long as the beauty standards did, we'd all be ending relationships every year.

So, we talked about how I got no attention in high school. This is what I looked like in high school. I'm 18 in that photo.

I'm the same weight. I obviously I'm older now, but like I look very similar. Why didn't I get attention in high school versus now?

Now I get as much attention as I want. What's changed? It's not my appearance.

I wasn't ugly in high school and I got zero attention in high school. I got zero attention through college. It's me.

It's my internal stuff. It's my brain that changed because I started to comport myself differently. I started to think about myself differently, to think about relationships differently.

I approached life more openly. And that is what changed. And if you clicked on this video, if you're looking for external validation about what's wrong with you, about like why you are not in a relationship, you're not there yet.

you still need to commiserate with someone about this this feeling of lack that you have. If you are telling yourself every single day, I'm ugly. No one's ever going to love me.

That is coming from a place of lack. You are coming from a place of deficiency. You lack self-worth, you lack self-compassion, you lack internal validation.

And I know people hate it when you say you have to love yourself before you can get into a relationship. I don't actually think that's true. I think there are plenty of people in relationships that do not love themselves.

I want to tell you it shows in their relationship. They do not have pleasant relationships. There's actually a lot of conflict because loving someone who does not love themselves is hard.

It is such difficult work. You are absorbing this lack. You are absorbing this deficiency.

You are becoming a caretaker for this person instead of an equal partner. And that takes a lot of work. That is asking a lot of your partner.

So if you tell yourself, I've never been in a relationship because I'm ugly. It's not true. I don't know what you look like, but it is not like there is someone out there who finds you attractive.

a lot of people are probably sensing from you is this lack mindset. It is this lack of selfworth. You are giving off this sense of like, oh, you don't want to be around me.

And they're going to be like, okay, thanks for the tip. I'll go over here. That's fine.

The other thing I want to address is you're not behind. I don't care if you're 52. I don't care if you're 32.

I don't care what age you are. This idea that you should have experienced a romantic relationship by a certain age, we've made that up. It came from nowhere.

The way I think about these timelines is they are antiquated from a time where marriage was more structurally built into the fabric of society because women could not work. Women were not allowed to have our own money. We were essentially adult children in that regard.

And as a result of that, my grandmother got married at 17. It was essentially an arranged mar. It was like I would say it's an assisted marriage.

So my grandmother got married at 17 and my grandfather was probably in his like early 20s because that's what they did. That was what it was expected. Was it a love match?

They ended up loving each other in a weird way. If you had put them together today, I don't think they would have gotten married. That is what we're looking for now.

You want alignment. You want someone who fits into the life that you want to live. And it's not out of necessity.

It's not out of a requirement. It is because you want to. And when you want something, you're a little more picky about it, as you should be.

if it's required of you, you take what you can get. And then if you fast forward one more generation, my mother got married at 27. I think my father was around 30.

They added 10 years to the equation because they didn't have to get married. My mother had a master's degree when she got married. My grandmother had like a a high school education, if that.

What makes you think that we're not going to add another 10 years to this equation? We're very new into this whole women are adults that are autonomous and can have bank accounts thing. Yeah, we're very new.

We don't think about it that way, but it's only been one or two generations of this new dynamic between men and women. And I don't want to go backwards. Do you?

I like having my own money. I want to be able to to support myself. And if that means I'm not going to ever have a relationship, I'm fine with that.

I like being treated like an adult and not a child who needs a man to tell her how to save and spend money. I will not be going back to that. Thank you so much.

So, what I'm trying to get at here is the timeline that we may have all been comparing ourselves to is antiquated. It is based on a different set of rules in our society. And you may be thinking, well, like that's marriage.

I want I just want to try. I just want a relationship. I just want like a person to choose me.

Lack. That's a lack mindset. Why aren't you choosing yourself?

And I've had this exact thought. I don't want you to think I'm shaming you. I'm trying to point out to you where you may need to work on rewiring some stuff in here because I've been working on building new neuropathways to, you know, try to reorganize how I view myself in the world.

And whenever I'm thinking like, I just want one guy to choose me. I'm so sick of being rejected. A lot of men on the internet will try to tell you that women are not experiencing rejection.

We do. We are. It can look like how they experience rejection, like, "No, thank you.

Don't come near me. " That that happens. It could also look like, "Oh, I'll have sex with you, but I don't want anything to do with your brain.

" That's projection. That's what like, "Oh, I don't want to deal with you as a person, but I will treat you like a sex toy. " And that is what I think a lot of women are are experiencing.

They just want a man to choose them. They want to be enough for a a partner. And I have felt that way as well.

And the way I work through it is I thought, "Okay, wait, hold on. This is external validation I'm seeking. I am seeking someone else to choose me because I need someone else to tell me that I'm not too much.

I'm not I don't talk too much. I'm not annoying. I'm not this.

I'm not all of these negative things that I think people think about me. I need someone else to tell me that they're not true. And once I realized that, I'm like, "Oh, okay.

That's unnecessary. " So, the first thing I want you to ask yourself, if you find yourself saying, "I just want someone to choose me. " Do you want a man to choose you?

Is that what you're you want a man to tell you you're okay? Do your girlfriends choose you every day? Your friends tell you they love you every single day?

You have people choosing you or whoever is in your life? You have people choosing you. You have people telling you in your life already.

You are good. You are worth it. So if you need some sort of external validation, you you can look for it and find it in your life already.

I have faith in that. You have at least one person who has chosen you. And the thing I realized is like I could go on a date and I could just be the person that they wanted me to be.

I could I could be everything that they wanted. I could just strip myself of all authenticity and and try to please their ego and and tell them what they want to hear and they will choose me. But like that's not me.

You can trick someone into choosing you, but you're not doing that because you value authenticity, which is something we all value on this channel. We want to be ourselves in a relationship. Whenever you are seeking external validation, that means there is something in your life you are not giving yourself.

And I feel like that was an unsatisfactory answer. I feel like I'm just saying like, "Suck it up, dude. Like, you don't want this.

" I feel I hate it when the video ends up sounding like that because if I were sitting with someone and actually talking them through this thought process that they have, I would ask them questions. Tell me about a time you said no to someone else because they weren't a good match with you. Tell me about a time where you felt that way.

And then we would walk through it with each other. And I would be able to ask them more questions about what they were experiencing. And I would be able to work with their explicit thoughts and like exactly what they were thinking when this came across their mind.

like what is lacking in your life that you feel like you need someone to choose you. You need a man to choose you. I'm assuming you're a woman who dates men.

That is the thing I want you to start thinking about. Journal on it. Whenever you start to get upset and sad about like I just wish someone would choose me.

You're you're lacking something. When you feel that way, you are not giving yourself the love you deserve. You are not giving yourself the respect you deserve because you feel like you are not enough in those moments.

Enough for what? Enough. Whenever you say I'm not enough, it is a comparison.

Who are you comparing yourself to? What what what do you feel like you don't give people in your life? What do you feel like you're not giving yourself?

The other thing that I find people do who have never been in a relationship is they have pedestalized romantic relationship. The default programming that we all have is that those exclusive relationships are the end all beall. But honestly, the way I talked myself out of this was first I remembered my girlfriends.

They have been in some really bad relationships that are were not aligned. they were having a lot of trouble with their partners. Being single is better than the wrong romantic relationship.

It will drain you. It will get you off track. You want a relationship that's going to build you up.

You want a relationship that will lay the foundations for your future together with that person. And that means that you need to be on the same page. You need to be walking up the same staircase.

And if one person is going up and the other person's going down, how does that help you? The other thing that I think people who have been single for a long time forget having a commitment to somebody is a commitment. You will have to make compromises and sacrifices.

You will have to give up something that you have and want for that other person on occasion. And the simplest way I remember this is if I'm laying in bed at night and I like like I don't know something pops into my head like I wish I had someone to cuddle with or something like that, I will literally get into the center of my queen-sized bed and I will starfish. I got this whole bed to myself.

I don't have to give it up for anybody. I don't have to fight someone who's hogging blankets. I There is a pro to every con.

I like sure it'd be nice to have someone to cuddle cuddle you, but eventually they their body starts to feel way too warm and you're like, "Get off of me. Get away. " [laughter] Also, I'm someone who's incredibly independent.

I have been single my entire life. As a result of that, I seem to have attracted women as my friends who are the opposite. They end up being very romantically inclined.

I learn a lot from them. I learn about how to be more open. I learn how to receive.

Like, they are so good at receiving. receiving compliments, receiving gifts, receiving attention, and I'm just like, "Oh, this is uncomfortable. " Like, "What the hell?

" Like, "I don't I don't like this. " And they're like, "What? What's like, you know, he's just being nice.

" I'm like, "I think he's going to rob us. " Like, [laughter] those women who have been in consistent relationships back to back to back, like, they don't like being single. They do have qualities about them that I admire, but sometimes I find that whenever they break up with somebody, they spiral.

They don't know how to be alone. They don't know how to not have that other person in their life. How to And then whenever they go out, they're like trying to find a new guy.

And I'm just like, can't we just exist like right now? Like, can't we just like I don't know, talk about something else? I see the the beauty in in being able to be open and receptive and and and get people to come over to you and, you know, socialize in that way.

That is something I admire in them. But at the same time, I would not give up my independence for anything. And I know that I've been forged in fire that I have had years of struggling through singlehood that have allowed me to become who I am today.

I would not be this person without having th those experiences without being reliant on myself and being independent with myself. And everyone has a different path. And I'm sure the woman who was in her relationship for like her entire life and then she gets out of one and she's like, "Oh crap, who am I?

Who am I without another person in my life? How do I exist on my own? How do I not be codependent?

" That is her own trajectory arc. You cannot find yourself if you are constantly crawling into another person. It is much more difficult to go on that self-discovery journey when you are in relationships.

And I do not envy those women. And I think that can be just as hard as struggling through life feeling rejected and unwanted. Waking up one day and saying, "I don't know who I am alone.

" That feels like self-abandonment. And I would never wish that on anybody. Solitude builds self-reliance.

That is the one thing I can say I have. I can rely on myself. I can trust myself to have my own back.

I can trust myself to pick myself up. And I'm not trying to push hyperindependence on people. I don't think those are the same things.

I don't want you to misunderstand me. But in order to build a community that's aligned with you and healthy and isn't just codependent and toxic, you need to have a reliance of on yourself. Like you need to know that you got you.

And it's really wonderful to have other people around you and to have that community and to reach out to people when you need that support. But at the same time, having that trust in yourself is like you cannot replace that with a community. You need to have trust because that's what attracts a community to you.

Knowing yourself, living fully for yourself is a beautiful thing. So, there is beauty in being single. There's benefits to being single.

And I challenge you whenever you find yourself feeling a little sorry for yourself, which is fine. Like, it's going to happen as you start to grow into this journey. Like, they get smaller.

Like, they get they get less intense and they get less sad. They get less visceral, I guess you could say, like having those bouts of sadness that you're alone. For me, they used to look like they used to look like crying fits.

Like absolutely gut-wrenching, like there was something defective about me. And this was only a few years ago. And now whenever I have a feeling of sadness that washes over me, like, "Oh, I don't have that.

Oh, I want that. " And it's like, "Yeah, that would be nice to have one day. " That's it.

You may see your friend with her boyfriend or whatever, and you're like, "Oh, that would be nice. Like, I'm happy for them. That's it.

And then it passes because you don't hold on to it. You don't assign meaning to it. Just because she has it doesn't mean you can't.

And I think that's an important thing to remember. Also, it's not a zero- sum game. And the last thing I wanted to touch on in this video is that we are in a weird dating landscape right now.

We are very new into this new dynamic between men and women in society, especially when it comes to money. You cannot separate money from relationships and dating. uh who you date and who you marry is one of the most consequential financial decisions of your life, honestly.

And we don't talk about it that way. We talk about it like children. But anyway, that's a different video.

We are in a weird dating landscape right now. Dating apps are a big part of that. Dating apps are not actually as efficient as you would think.

I was on them for a while because I'm like, well, I can just get dates so easily on this. Like, it's just a numbers game, right? I can just find more people to meet and like this will this will do it.

No, it's not just a numbers game. You have to be pickier with who you give your time and attention and energy to and the dating apps create this illusion of progress by giving you volume. It's not good for you.

Like just because there are more options does not mean there are quality options. And I'm not saying anyone's lowquality. I'm just saying they're not aligned.

They're not what you're looking for. And just the number of guys you have to sift through who's like, "Yo, you want to hook up? You want to hook up?

" I'm like, "Be original, dude. this is so boring. Um, like, no, I don't I don't want to hook up with you.

And then, of course, there's hookup culture, which I decided a long time ago not to play into because I do not think it's good for any of us at all. I tell most women not to either, but that is your choice. I I'm not telling you what to do with your body.

I'm just saying hookup culture not great. Online dating is giving us this illusion of progress because it's giving us volume. It's giving us numbers, but they're not aligned matches.

They don't lead anywhere. The other thing that we are also in the middle of this shift is because this is all about weird dating climate is the pandemic. We still don't know what the pandemic did to dating.

We don't understand the ramifications of the pandemic. It is going to be overarching and we will start to understand what it did to us in I would say the next decade or two and how it changed our relationship patterns, our just like cultural generally. I think we're still inside of the bubble and so we can't see what happened.

There's going to be whole historians that just study the pandemic like Gen Alpha and Gen Beta Bravo. I don't even know what they're called uh at this point. There's going to be entire careers just to look at like let's study the sociology behind the pandemic.

Like it's weird and we don't say it enough. This is weird and we need to give ourselves grace because we're still cooking this new dating landscape and until we can figure out a dynamic where we're all comfortable, men and women, like it's not that I don't think much is going to change. And so we are still going about this as this idea of like, oh, we got to pick through a sea of of bad apples in order to find a good one.

That was a very mixed metaphor, but I can't think of a better one. Oh, we got to pick through this like hay stack to find the needle, right? Like this very individualistic understanding of dating is very isolating.

It feels weird. It feels almost hopeless. It's like, okay, I'm never going to find the needle before that like hot ass with like a lot going for her finds it.

Like, of course he's going to go for her. That creates competition for women. I don't want to compete with anybody.

I'm good. And of course, when you're dating, there is like competition. But I don't think I don't like to think about it that way.

If you want to choose someone over me, it wasn't even an option. You were not available to me. That's it.

You were you were taken. It's not a competition if you don't want me. That I'm good.

You don't need to tell me twice. I'm fine. Well, I'm going to walk away.

I don't know if any of this is satisfactory. I hope it is. I hope this video helped you.

I know that this is a really demoralizing feeling. Like I have never been in a relationship and I want one. I feel that.

I can tell. I know. I understand.

And that and I'm just This is what has helped me reorganize my thoughts around this. It is coming from a place of lack. And you need to address that deficiency that you feel in yourself.

External validation for any feeling of deficiency will never solve the problem that you have. Like this feeling. It will temporarily soo the wound, but it's not going to heal it.

You need to be the person that heals it. These were sort of the realizations that I came to that made me understand my life, my trajectory, what I have been through in my life and how it has like culminated in where I am today. And I would not change a thing.

This is how it had to be. This is my path. I know I can be alone for as long as I have to be until it happens because I have that reliance in myself and I have that love for myself and that respect for myself that I will walk away when someone mistreats me.

I am a reasonable person who sets reasonable boundaries and I'm not going to cross them because I need external validation. And that is where where you need to get to. I do believe anyone can get here if you do the work and you really are honest with yourself and compassionate with yourself and compassionate with what you've been through and understand that you've told yourself these stories that are no longer serving you.

They are actively hurting you. And you have all of the power within you to tell yourself a different story. You just need to choose what that story is and make it a good one.

And that's really what it comes down to. I'm going to put a playlist on the screen of about intentional dating. Let me know what you thought in the comments.

This was a messy video to film. I hope it turns out okay.