All these posters above hit the nail on the head. So much that is said by everyone resonates with my own life experience, and I speak of course as a late fortysomething virgin.

Every age is tough when LS, every decade, each in its own way. Going without even a kiss from a girl in my teens, was frustrating in the extreme, but I always thought I was mere weeks away, months away, from some female affection. Ha ha ha. Still never been kissed, and I am 2 years from 50. Twenties were unbearable, since the sex drive is so strong, and you are expected to be hooking up with girls. Turning 30, as a virgin, is psychologically devastating. Hence my lame suicide attempt at that age. Thirties as an LS are very bleak, the neuroses start to multiply, your behavior, if you are not superwatchful, can become very strange, all sorts of emotional problems, and as is pointed out above by one poster, you can and do get physically ill (because you cannot separate the mind from the body). A normal social life, even just hanging out with friends and family, becomes impossible or fraught with pitfalls because the dead pterodactyl that is your lifelong incel is hanging around your neck and its stench permeates every seemingly innocent social event and circumstance.

You develop a very black sense of humor, which is necessary but not enough to stop you from sinking into a world of painful oblivion. In your forties, you become as Pink Floyd put it, comfortably numb. Then again it's actually an uncomfortable numbness. You start to freak out how the years have flown by like a raging torrent, and people young enough to be your children are themselves men and women!! having relationships, getting married and all the rest. You start to worry about the risk of going full-bore insane because the emotional problems aggregate, the memories of a desert life sear even more than in one's thirties. Of course all around you young people with everything to live for get wiped out in car accidents, get cancer, there are murders and freak accidents. However incel just plods on, in his bubble of misery and loneliness. And he knows that if he is sitting in a restaurant or mall and a mad gunman storms the place, and sprays everybody with machine gun fire, young families will die, young lovers and children, but incel will emerge as the lone survivor, without a scratch. Because when you have nothing to live for, you will emerge unscathed from fire, earthquakes, revolution. Empires rise and fall, but incel like the cockroach, scurries along. One hopes for a heart attack, before old age, because old age is tough enough, even if you have not wasted your life. But if your life has been an empty desert, without love and affection, without the touch of a woman, you hope and pray for a quick death, before 60 please God.

This is not just self-pity, I have a very real fear of madness. My mind is already slipping into a very dark abyss. There is no happy ending here. Thank God for death whenever it comes. Death my only friend.

At 57, I'm still thinking like an 18-y.o. because in a way, I still am 18 mentally and emotionally. I'm that teenager who is still waiting for his first time. I actually have a crush on a girl who can't be any more than 25 that works at a local grocery store. I'm probably older than her father! That's a sick, predatory concept. Of course, I would NEVER hit on her or even flirt (I'd probably be arrested). There are also women closer to my age who I fantasize about. But it's all the same.