u/LegalAd2006

I recently sat down with ChatGPT once the course of multiple hours over several days and basically told it my entire life story using voice to text. I first told it that I wanted to tell it my entire life story as best I could and asked it to create a numerical list of questions covering every aspect of my life that I could answer one by one, from childhood to parents to education to friendships to dating to interests etc etc. It came up with about 25-30 questions and each one took me around 20 minutes on average to answer in great detail and depth.

After all was said and done it gave me some really great insights, patterns, and analysis that simply wouldn’t have been possible for me to do on my own or with a friend- there’s simply too much data. I genuinely felt like I understood myself significantly better afterwards, though granted I took stuff with a grain of salt too. There was stuff I had never even considered about myself. However I told my friend and he said that this is just evidence I don’t know myself that well and that ChatGPT can’t provide any real insight and is built to simply validate me. I will say it did criticize me and point out negative traits too so it wasn’t all sunshine rainbows here.

Have any of yall done something similar? Did I waste my time or is there genuinely something of substance here? Is my friend right that this was all bullshit?

I’ve had one relationship in my life that lasted two years back in uni, and we couldn’t have penetrative sex at all because I had phimosis and it was super duper painful when we tried. We just stuck to making out, oral and toys as well as a LOOOT of cuddling and non sexual intimacy. I couldn’t get treated as health insurance was an issue for me back then. My ex could only get off to oral anyway so she didn’t feel it was an issue.

Fast forward I’m a working professional now and I finally got the issue fixed earlier this year. But I’m still not really comfortable with penetrative sex and honestly I think it may take me a while to come around on this. I need to really feel safe, loved, and comfortable before I commit to doing that with a woman and I can’t really provide a guarantee or timeline on when that might happen. For me building a deep emotional connection is an absolute necessity first.

I guess all this to say is that I’d like to be in a relationship where penetrative sex isn’t a constant expectation at least initially, and one where a lack of penetrative sex doesn’t lead to my GF feeling rejected or miserable and ultimately lead to the demise of the relationship. I’m more than happy to engage in everything else, for me cuddling is probably my favorite thing to do with a partner because that is (among other things) what builds trust, closeness and safety for me, and it feels special beyond comparison :) And when I say cuddling I mean cuddling just for the sake of cuddling not cuddling that has to lead to anything else. And no I wouldn’t consider myself asexual just someone who needs a lot of time love and trust before this particular act.

My concern is that my friends say the vast majority of women would find me to be a dealbreaker and I’m kinda concerned they’re right. I mean I get it, penetrative sex is super important to most people and is kind of a must in a relationship for them, but is it really that dire for me? I’m just concerned and also don’t wanna waste women’s time.

Anyways given my unique situation I thought it’d be cool to open this up to some discussion. Yes, I understand women are not a monolith, I am just trying to understand in a general sense how such a situation would be perceived by individual women my age and get an idea of what I might expect.

I’ve had one relationship in my life that lasted two years back in uni, and we couldn’t have penetrative sex at all because I had phimosis and it was super duper painful when we tried. We just stuck to making out, oral and toys as well as a LOOOT of cuddling and non sexual intimacy. I couldn’t get treated as health insurance was an issue for me back then. My ex could only get off to oral anyway so she didn’t feel it was an issue.

Fast forward I’m a working professional now and I finally got the issue fixed earlier this year(adult circumcision). But I’m still not really comfortable with penetrative sex and honestly I think it may take me a while to come around on this. I need to really feel safe, loved, and comfortable before I commit to doing that with a woman and I can’t really provide a guarantee or timeline on when that might happen. For me building a deep emotional connection is an absolute necessity first.

I guess all this to say is that I’d like to be in a relationship where penetrative sex isn’t a constant expectation at least initially, and one where a lack of penetrative sex doesn’t lead to my GF feeling rejected or miserable and ultimately lead to the demise of the relationship. I’m more than happy to engage in everything else, honestly for me cuddling is probably my favorite thing to do with a partner because it feels special beyond comparison :) And when I say cuddling I mean cuddling just for the sake of cuddling not cuddling that has to lead to anything else. And no I wouldn’t consider myself asexual just someone who needs a lot of time love and trust before this particular act.

My concern is that my friends say the vast majority of women would find me to be a dealbreaker and I’m kinda concerned they’re right. I mean I get it, penetrative sex is super important to most people and is kind of a must in a relationship, but is it really that dire for me? I’m just concerned and also don’t wanna waste women’s time.

Anyways given my unique situation I thought it’d be cool to open this up to some discussion.

I’m 25M in the USA and feel completely lost and depressed with life- it feels like nothing has gone right in my life and that I’m a total failure.

I actually had super involved parents who were really pushy about my career but this actually worked against me I feel. In high school they saw I really enjoyed tinkering with gadgets and building stuff and immediately pushed me to learn to code and design circuits and become an electrical engineer. I was young and naive and didn’t know any better so I just listened to them and assumed this was my life’s passion and what I wanted to do for the rest of my years. Started studying really hard and did really well in high school and college apps.

I went to a top 30 university in the country on a full ride scholarship and did my BSEE and went on to do my MSEE as well. I had a decent social life in college and went to parties here and there but didn’t have time to do more fulfilling things like dating and having a long term relationship. I wasn’t a loner by any means but I definitely was not living it up in college, I stayed very focused on school and assumed this would all be worth it in the end. I did internships, research, and tutored younger peers at the encouragement of my parents.

I finally graduated at age 24 from the MS program and landed a job making 130k a year. And it was here that things went downhill. I hate the day to day of being an engineer in the workplace in a corporate office, and it just feels so soul sucking. I come home every day completely drained and depleted and resent that I have to get up the next day and do it all over again. I’ve had suicidal thoughts because living my life like this is actually hellish and I can’t imagine 40 more years of this.

Really I think I need to take a long career break to travel and just focus on healing before I figure out what to do next. I don’t see myself in the engineering/tech space at all long term but I have no clue where else I’d go that could give me a similarly high salary and tbh it feels wayyyy too late at 25 to restart after I’ve put in all this work already. I know folks say 25 is young but it doesn’t feel that way right now.

My parents don’t understand at all- to them they see that I have a high paying job that I’m supposedly passionate about and don’t get why i suddenly lost interest in this career path. They are confused why I would want to change careers after investing my blood sweat and tears to get here and tbh I can’t really blame them for saying that. I think they’d be willing to support me through this if I talk to them but it’s not gonna be easy on them either as they’ve certainly aged and are nearing retirement.

To top this all off I made the huge mistake of neglecting my dating/romantic life and I’m 25 and never had a girlfriend, which while not the end of the world is still a cause of distress for me and I don’t even feel like I’d have the mental energy or effort to be able to date while I hate my day to day life this much- wouldn’t be fair to a potential partner. I assumed that I would get to this point with a well paid career I love and be perfectly happy and healthy such that I could pursue romantic relationships but given how things turned out I regret not having done so in college.

I’ve looked at a number of options like joining the military, PA school, law school, and even becoming an airline pilot but honestly none of it seems to sit right with me and it feels like every well paid field has kinda closed its doors by now given my age and the time it’d take to change paths. A ton of well paying fields are heavily saturated at the entry level now which also doesn’t help. My real passion is making music but that took a backseat to EE for the last 7 years and I don’t know how to get back into it, nor does it seem like something that could make a reliable income.

I’m just sitting here in my bedroom every day after work hating myself for not having realized sooner that this wasn’t what I wanted and just blindly following my parents path for me. What do I even do now? I feel like at 25, my life journey has already ended and all doors are closed to me(not trying to be dramatic I genuinely feel that way). I feel like I haven’t even lived a life at all…. just followed what I was told and now I’m sitting here miserable with basically nothing to show for my efforts.

Any ideas or suggestions are welcome- I don’t want to go on with life like this but I just don’t see a way out.