I’m nearly 30, a virgin and feel lonely. The manosphere is trying to draw me in – where else can I seek assurance? | Leading questions

I’m approaching 30 and I’m still a kissless virgin.

I’ve suffered with depression and anxiety since childhood and my family isn’t the most functional or supportive. I don’t really have friends either, as I find it hard to connect with others due to being bullied and feeling that I’m not worthwhile or wanted. I was also homeschooled from 14 and moved to a different part of the country at 15 and a few more times since then, so I feel quite rootless and alienated.

I attended university but struggled to cope, and my time coincided with Covid – after which I never returned to live in my university’s city.

I have tried dating very tentatively in the past but I feel like an impostor and as if I need to be perfect. I don’t feel attractive and I tend to feel invisible.

I’m working in a job which I enjoy and I get on with my colleagues, although I am often riddled with thoughts that they secretly dislike me. The town where I live is also starting to decline and I’m deeply worried about the future.

I’ve managed to avoid most of the manosphere but I have been gravitationally drawn into it in my search for guidance and advice, as well as to soothe my need for certainty and assurance. I abhor it but I don’t know how to go forward as a misfit man.

My question is mainly how do I manage with all this? Am I missing something? And should I forget about meeting someone and accept I might be one of those people who’ll never find anyone?

Eleanor says: Here’s the validating part: this is an awful lot to bear. You have lived through a terrible period of loneliness and isolation, and your depression and anxiety are as serious and potentially debilitating as any physical ailment (and, it goes without saying, as deserving – and requiring – of ongoing treatment).

Now for the tough part. It’s not that you alone lack certainty and assurance. There’s not a party that only you were uninvited from. It is hard for so many people right now.

The manosphere tells us this suffering is unique, targeted neglect, contrary to your entitlements. It positions you as the temporarily embarrassed fortunate. It tries to restore one group’s position in the pecking order, rather than asking why anyone has to lose. To the extent that it positions itself as a movement interested in wellbeing and loneliness, it is telling that it has complete disinterest in other people’s suffering or other kinds of loneliness. It is not a desire that these things be fixed. It is a desire that it does not happen to me.

That’s a mistake that would forfeit one of the greatest gifts available to you. Suffering like yours gives you understanding. Life made you purchase that understanding at great cost, but you now know what it’s like to be lonely. You know what it is to feel overwhelmed, adrift, unsure of yourself. That means you can give other people what you yourself are looking for: understanding and acknowledgment.

Many of the most beautiful souls in the world did not become that way by having great family, an easy ride and no anxiety. Being a good person is often about ratio – what-did-you-endure to what-did-you-pass-on. What-were-you-handed: what-did-you-make. Some people are handed two mothballs and a piece of string, and make things better in their corner of the universe.

Your suffering and your anxiety gives you the ability to make your part of the world better, partly by seeing and meeting other souls, sometimes at their most vulnerable: at their most scared, most lonely, least sure of what’s going to happen.

Admittedly, that kind of connection is not the same as getting numbers at bars. The fact that you are kind and thoughtful and responsible may not show up in digital spaces that prioritise facial structure or banter. So you might be down a few smooches. Smooches are great, don’t get me wrong – but compared to the depth of possible human connection, they are ultimately flotsam.

But for that deeper connection, you don’t want to be attractive to people writ large. You want to be attractive to the handful of people with whom you’d be a good match.

I can’t take away your uncertainty about whether you’ll find that person, I wish I could. But if you find them, you’ll find them in the spaces organised around your interests, and you’ll find them by being you on purpose, not by being a pastiche of other people’s ideas about a “man”, or a collage of your fears about yourself. You want to be loved for you.

You have been dealt a hard hand. It’s no wonder that you – like so many people right now – feel adrift and hungry for certainty.

But it’s not about finding assurance and certainty. It’s about learning to live and make things better for other people, even without it.

The reader’s letter has been edited for length and clarity.

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