Empty Nest

For those of you who don't know, a few months ago I found out that my son (who is 25 and lives on his own) has never had a girlfriend or been on any type of date. Unfortunately, nothing has improved in this area for him.

In talking about this with my son, one thing I brought up with him that was suggested on my previous thread was what about church. (As an aside I would like it My son was a bit evasive about this, and recently I found out way. He has stopped going to church. By itself I don't like it, but he is an adult, and whether he goes to church or not is his decision to make not mine. I'm really more concerned about the reason behind it.

It will take too long to get into everything, but it all comes down to him being 25 and being completely dateless. My son talked about how his church like several others he has been to basically ignore you between graduating from high school and getting married. I didn't quite believe it but I thought about it and the same thing is true about my church as well. (As an aside I was hoping that his first girlfriend would be from church since given my son's situation I think it would be safer if his first girlfriend was from church. However, it seems like there weren't any single women anywhere near his age at church anyway.)

This reminded me of something that happened to my son senior year of high school. What happened to my son was almost like he lost his friends. He didn't really lose his friends. My son's male friends all found girlfriends, and his female friends all found boyfriends. As a result they all forgot about my son. It wasn't anything malicious. Because my son wasn't dating anybody, they just forgot about him. The obvious answer would have been to find more friends, but that wasn't an option since being senior year by the time that would have had results my son would have been at college for a long time. In the end, everything changed because everyone left for college, so I never thought anything about this after the fact.

I'm not worried about something that happened several years ago. What I'm bothered by is how what my son's problem is affecting other aspects of his life. It's like all of his problems are really just the fact that he has never had a girlfriend or even been on a date.

For that matter, why can't my son find a girlfriend? What's wrong here? There's no reason why this should be happening.

Anne

I think some day soon your son is going to meet a very nice girl. It will happen.

Hugs

Lorraine       cl- Canadian Parents   & Empty Nest

                      

 

 

"my son's problem is affecting other aspects of his life. It's like all of his problems are really just the fact that he has never had a girlfriend or even been on a date."

I can imagine that it must be hard on his self-esteem and that can affect the way he performs in other areas.

Is your son quite shy or uncomfortable talking with women? Does he have women friends that he hangs out with? Has he asked women out on dates and they declined, or has he never met anybody that he wanted to get to know better? Does he currently do things to try to meet women? Online dating services, or activities like Sierra Club Singles, etc? I live in a large metropolitan area and there are a lot of activities for singles, many of them specific to age group and/or interests.

Some churches do have young singles groups, I guess they are realizing that is an ignored group that wants to meet other young people with similar values.

Sorry to ask so many questions, I'm just curious about the backstory.

Its hard to be far away from our kids when they have a problem...although when they are adults the problems are for them to solve anyway *sigh*.

Thanks, Lorraine. It's just that this thing is turning into a black hole for my son. Things that I thought were completely unrelated get sucked in that I would never expect and get messed up.

Last time I talked to my son about this, he joked that he would like an arranged marriage. At least I hope he was joking.

Anne

I haven't noticed any particular shyness or uncomfortableness in my son when talking with women. He has a few female friends. All of his friends know he is single, but of course they don't know about the real nature of his problem. I have never witnessed it obviously, but he has asked out women. Needless to say they all rejected him. He has tried plenty of things with no success.

My son has tried online dating which has so far been a complete bust. He has said that he isn't sure there are any women on online dating. He has messaged women, but has gotten no response (not even a no thanks). No actual women responded to his profile. The only "responses" that his profile got were from porn sites. Apparently, these results are typical for online dating for guys.

I don't know if there is really any "backstory" on this. It seems like my son just had something so incredibly improbable and unusual happen to him that there's little knowledge on it.

Anne