To The Grown-A$$ Woman Who’s Never Been Kissed — There’s A Problem

On the short list of behaviors I find most annoying online, right up there with duck-lipped selfies and group photos of middle-aged people at happy hour, is the whiny bitter woman's essay.

She's mad at the world and desperate for you to know about it.

So last night, as I scrolled through my post-dinner Facebook feed, I came across a post about a woman who was 33 and had never been kissed, I am not sure what compelled me to click — well, aside from my not-so-subtly-disguised wish to one day play Dear Abby. (I may need to work on that.)

33 wrote that she had somehow made it through high school, drunken college parties, and her twenties without so much as a peck on the cheek. 

Really? No seven minutes in heaven? No spin the bottle? Not just one little slip of a tongue? 

I don’t mean to be insensitive, but seriously? 

I do have empathy for her situation. How does she bring that up during a first date? Does she spend time practicing on her pillow so she won’t seem like a novice? 

As 33 continued, she shared a statistic from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, stating that 2% of women and 3% of men between the ages of 25-44 still have their V-card. 

That’s like 4,200,000 people or greater than the population of Los Angeles alone!

Wheels spinning, I Googled "dating apps for virgins," because if there isn’t one, I could probably make a killing on it, eHarmony aside.

Aha! PURE. Sounds about right. Um ... Until I started reading.

“We believe it’s natural to feel a powerful sense of attachment to a long-term partner while exploring an intense romantic love with someone else, and feeling sexual desire for a whole range of people.”

Nope. That one's probably not for the beginner! 

33 states that many virgins haven’t been deflowered (or, I guess, haven't deflowered someone else) because opportunity has never knocked. She notes that she’s tried online dating, but that “I have met potential partners from the Internet, only to watch the interest in their eyes die when they see me.”

Ouch. 

It saddened me when 33 mentioned throughout the piece that while she’s “bigger than curvy,” and has “never had a pretty face,” she's seen less attractive women than herself manage to date and even marry. 

As I see it, the truth about dating is that a significant lack of confidence is far less appealing than a gap-toothed smile or an extra twenty pounds. I’ve advised single friends, male and female, that if they aren’t feeling great about their appearance they should make a change — but more to instill some inner swagger because they don't look good enough to earn some good right swipes.

What I desperately want to say to sweet 33, is that if you can’t find a single attractive quality about yourself, how is anyone else going to?

I can imagine that without a hearty CV of dating experience under her belt, she may still be basing her expectations on Cinderella, Hallmark holiday flicks, and that Drew Barrymore movie where she goes back to high school for a Mulligan on her first makeout session — all of which raise the bar WAY too high to reach without a six-foot ladder. 

Maybe we need to stop feeding girls a steady diet of Disney princesses and the handsome prince on the white horse. And as grown up women, we need to accept that there are both far worse and far better fates than becoming the lady of the castle. It all depends on how we chose to look at it.

After all, some do get lucky enough to end up in a cozy cottage with seven super cute guys ...