Seeking advice on sex/relationships- without dating apps

[35mmgeek]

Hello,

I am a nonbinary lesbian in my early 20's, and I am looking to start dating/have sex for the first time. I have never been in a relationship before, and have only ever had one kiss from a close friend of mine. For one, dating apps terrify the ever-living hell out of me for a number of reasons, and going to gay bars alone makes me really uncomfortable. I want to "get out there", but I don't know how to do it.

For context:
I moved from a small-ish city in the southern united states to a larger city in Ireland about a year ago, when my mother basically forced me to accept a university offer here, instead of moving to California like I had originally wanted to. While I have made some friends here, and even attend a local meet up/support group for queer women regularly I feel more isolated than I did back home, despite me getting out more than I did.

I am in a couple clubs at my university, and attend events pretty regularly, but the university I am at does not really feel like the kind of place where I can find a date, as things seem to feel more about friendships than anything else. I do have friends outside of the clubs, but they are often very busy. I also did not manage to make any friends in my classes, as I did not really attend them due to severe depression the past two semesters. Thus, I have even fewer friends I can hang out with now that classes are over.

I have a few friends outside of university, but they are also often busy, and difficult to get to do anything with. The local support group I regularly attend is a social thing, and has been dwindling for a while now. My GP recommended a queer board game night thing to me, but they only meet a couple times a month and it is mostly men. I would go to the 2 decent gay bars in town more, but I don't really have anyone to go with and I hate going alone.

I have had one person in the 12 months show any sort of open sexual interest in me (that I would be willing to reciprocate), and they friend-zoned me the next day (nothing happened that night besides chatting). The only other chance I had, I fumbled it.

While I am no longer severely depressed, I have found it difficult to make even new platonic friends here. There is a lot less for me to really do here, in terms of going out to places/events, since my interests lean heavily towards the nerdy/niche end of things and those interests are poorly served here TBF.

I want to at least get laid this summer since I have fuckall else to do besides read comics and catch up on my video game/book backlog, and the only girl i'm even kind of interested in atm is probably straight.

[mikky]

Hey 35mmgeek,

It sounds like you’ve had some huge changes, and not ones you necessarily wanted, in the last year. Moving to a new country, being in a bigger city, starting a new program/university, experiencing severe depression, is a LOT. And you have been able to make friends, attend events and groups… it sounds like you’re doing a lot already to get out there. I can see how that also might be feeling pretty frustrating.

I am really not the best person on our team here to give advice about getting into any dating or social scene, so I’ll see if someone else here has ideas to share. A note in the meantime- we ask that the age in user’s profiles reflects your actual ages. Can you update that?