My niece was hiding in my kitchen during her own graduation party, stress-eating chips while everyone else played beer pong in the backyard.
“I can’t go back out there,” she said, not looking up from the bag of Doritos. “Jen’s telling everyone about her boyfriend drama, and when they asked about mine, I just… left.”
I knew that particular flavor of mortification. The way your face burns when everyone’s swapping stories you can’t match. The specific loneliness of being twenty-two and feeling like you’re watching life through a window while everyone else is living it.
“Want to know a secret?” I said, settling beside her at the counter. “I didn’t kiss anyone until I was twenty-three. Didn’t have sex until twenty-five. Didn’t have a real relationship until I was twenty-seven.”
She looked at me like I’d just admitted to being raised by wolves. Which, in the currency of modern young adulthood, maybe I had been.
1. The moment you realize you’re not just “taking things slow”
For the longest time, I told myself I was selective. Focused on school. Not interested in hookup culture. All perfectly valid choices, except they weren’t exactly choices—they were stories I told myself about why nothing was happening.
The realization hit during senior year of college, when my roommate was coordinating her fifth breakup playlist and I was still waiting for someone to hold my hand. There’s a particular vertigo that comes with understanding you’re not on a different path—you’re not on the path at all.
2. Becoming the group’s accidental relationship counselor
By some cosmic joke, when you’ve never been in a relationship, you become everyone’s neutral party for relationship advice. “You’re so objective!” they’d say, like my inexperience was a superpower instead of a source of quiet panic.
I perfected the art of giving advice based entirely on movies, books, and careful observation. “Have you tried talking to him about it?” became my Swiss Army knife of relationship wisdom, applicable to every situation I’d never personally encountered.
3. The archaeological dig that is trying to figure out flirting
Watching my friends recognize flirtation was like watching people read a language I’d never learned. “He’s obviously into you,” they’d say about some interaction that looked to me like a normal conversation about weather patterns.
I started studying flirting like an anthropologist, taking mental notes on eye contact duration and laugh frequencies. Did touching someone’s arm mean interest or just emphasis? Was “we should hang out sometime” literal or coded? The semiotics of attraction remained frustratingly opaque.
4. The panic of “never have I ever”
Every late bloomer knows the cold dread of party games designed to expose your inexperience. “Never Have I Ever” becomes a minefield where you either lie (badly) or watch everyone’s faces rearrange into pity when you don’t drink for anything beyond “never have I ever gone skydiving.”
I once claimed I’d drunkenly kissed someone at a concert, constructing an elaborate story about a band I’d never seen and a person who existed only in my desperate imagination. The lie felt so transparent I was certain everyone knew, but they all just nodded and moved on to the next round. I spent the rest of the night terrified someone would ask follow-up questions about my fictional concert makeout.
I developed a strategy: arrive late to parties, volunteer to refill snacks during game time, or suddenly remember an urgent text I needed to answer. Anything to avoid the public revelation that I was still waiting for experiences everyone else was already bored by.
5. Creating an entire fictional history in your head
Without real experiences to draw from, imagination fills the gaps. I constructed elaborate scenarios about what my first kiss would be like, how I’d know someone liked me, what being in love felt like. These fantasies became so detailed they felt like memories, until reality had to compete with years of carefully curated expectations.
When I finally did kiss someone—awkwardly, at a friend’s birthday party, tasting like cheap wine and nervousness—the most shocking part was how ordinary it felt. Not bad, not magical, just… human. No soundtrack swelled. The earth didn’t move. He didn’t suddenly understand my soul. It was just two people pressing their faces together, hoping they were doing it right.
6. The specific shame of googling basic things
My search history from my early twenties was a monument to inexperience: “how do you know if someone wants to kiss you,” “what does hooking up actually mean,” “is it weird to not have dated anyone by 23.” Clear browsing history became a weekly ritual, as if someone might discover my shameful knowledge gaps.
The internet became my sex ed teacher, relationship counselor, and source of constant reassurance that yes, other people were also late bloomers, hidden in forums and comment sections, equally mortified and searching.
7. The moment someone finds out and doesn’t know how to react
“Wait, never?” The disbelief in their voice was always followed by a rapid emotional calculation—surprise, pity, curiosity, then careful neutrality. “That’s totally fine!” they’d say, in the same tone people use when you tell them you don’t like chocolate or have never seen Star Wars. Fine, but fundamentally weird.
I learned to preempt the reaction with humor. “I’m basically a unicorn,” I’d say, or “Still waiting for my rom-com moment.” Anything to avoid the well-meaning but mortifying follow-up questions about why and how and what was wrong with the men in my life.
8. Watching your inexperience affect new relationships
When I finally started dating Marcus—my now-partner—at twenty-seven, the imbalance was palpable. He’d navigate relationship conflicts with the ease of experience while I was still learning the basics. “Why didn’t you just tell me that bothered you?” he’d ask, genuinely puzzled, while I was still figuring out I was allowed to be bothered.
Being a late bloomer means learning relationship skills in real-time, without the practice rounds everyone else had in college. Every small conflict felt enormous because I had no context for normal. Every milestone carried extra weight because I’d waited so long to reach it.
9. The unexpected freedom when you stop caring about the timeline
Something shifted around twenty-six. Maybe it was exhaustion, maybe wisdom, but I stopped treating my inexperience like a shameful secret. When friends complained about their dating horror stories, I’d cheerfully announce I’d skipped that particular circle of hell. When people asked why I was single, I’d shrug and say I was picky.
The truth was more complicated—I was picky, but I’d also been scared, confused, and probably missed some obvious signals along the way. But owning my timeline, whatever the reasons, felt like reclaiming power I didn’t know I’d given away.
Final thoughts
My niece was quiet for a while, processing. The party sounds drifted in from outside—laughter, music, the splash of someone falling into the pool.
“Did you feel broken?” she asked finally. “Like everyone else got some manual and you didn’t?”
“Every day,” I admitted. “Until I realized everyone’s pretending to understand the manual. Some people just start pretending earlier.”
She smiled for the first time since I’d found her. “Marcus seems pretty great, though.”
“He is,” I said. “And you know what’s funny? He told me once that he was jealous I got to experience everything fresh, without all the baggage from terrible college relationships. That I knew who I was before I learned who I was with someone else.”
I’m not saying being a late bloomer is better—it’s not a consolation prize or a secret advantage. It’s just different. The timeline isn’t the story; the story is the story. And some of us just take a more scenic route to get there.
My niece grabbed another handful of chips, but her shoulders had relaxed. “Maybe I’ll go back out there in a bit,” she said.
“Or maybe you won’t,” I said. “Both are fine.”
And for the first time in her life, I think she actually believed that.
