Is it weird to never have been in a relationship in your 20s?

No, it isn’t weird, and you’re not as far behind as it feels. Most people your age are barely dating, very few feel confident at it, and the zero only looks huge because everyone else’s breakups run through your group chat while your part stays quiet.

What you’re short on is practice. Practice is the one thing on this list you can start this month.

Didn’t everyone else figure this out in college?

It looks that way from the outside. Mostly, they didn’t.

Take Hana, 25. Her roommate is two months out of a three-year relationship. Her college friends’ group chat is a rolling news feed of first dates, breakups and “he said WHAT.” Hana has never had a boyfriend, and every time someone asks “so what’s your type?” she makes a joke and changes the subject. There’s a guy at her Tuesday run club, Ravi, who always ends up next to her on the cooldown. She hasn’t said more than “nice pace” to him in six weeks.

Here’s Hana’s night, split up:

• What happened: her roommate cried about the ex again, and Hana had nothing to add.
• The reading: everyone learned this years ago and she missed the class.
• The fear: if Ravi finds out she’s 25 with zero experience, he’ll think something’s wrong with her.
• The next step: still open.

The reading doesn’t hold up well. In the 2026 State of Our Unions report, a nationally representative survey of 5,275 unmarried Americans aged 22 to 35, only about one in three were actively dating.1 Among those who expect to marry someday, 74% of women and 64% of men had not dated at all, or only a few times, in the past year.1

It starts earlier than college, too. In a 2023 Survey Center on American Life poll, 56% of Gen Z adults said they’d had a romantic relationship at some point as a teenager, compared with 76% of Gen Xers and 78% of Baby Boomers.2 So the bench Hana thinks she’s alone on is crowded. Everyone on it just assumes everyone else is in the game.

Why does zero experience feel so huge in your 20s?

Because your 20s are built for comparison, and a few things stack up:

• The college story. There’s a script that says college is where you learn relationships. If that didn’t happen, it feels like failing a class nobody told you was graded.
• Roommates and group chats. You hear every first kiss, every breakup and every new person in real time. With nothing to add, you go quiet.
• Your feed. You see couples’ trips and anniversaries. You don’t see the people scrolling past them, also single.
• The secret. The longer you go without saying “I haven’t really dated,” the heavier it gets, and the harder it is to start.

None of that is evidence something is wrong with you. It’s evidence you’re comparing your inside to everyone else’s highlight reel.

Is dating actually a skill?

Yes, or really a handful of them: starting a conversation, asking a question one level deeper than “what do you do,” reading whether someone’s interested, saying what you want, ending something kindly.

Those are exactly where young adults feel shaky. In the same survey, only about one in three expressed faith in their dating skills, and only about one in three men and one in five women felt confident approaching someone they liked.1 Just 37% trusted their judgment choosing a partner, 34% felt confident talking about feelings, and 36% felt confident picking up social cues on a date.1

That’s oddly good news. Skills get better with reps. People who seem naturally good at this usually just started earlier and fumbled more in lower-stakes moments.

Where do the reps come from?

Mostly from seeing the same faces again. In a 2011 study, Harry Reis, Eli Finkel and colleagues paired up strangers and had them talk for different amounts of time. The more they talked, the more they liked each other, because they felt more listened to, more comfortable and more like they knew the other person.3 Those were same-sex pairs getting acquainted, not dates. But the mechanism is the one Hana’s run club is already running on: Ravi gets a little more familiar every Tuesday, and so does she.

That’s why a recurring thing beats a flood of first impressions. You don’t have to be dazzling once. You have to show up enough times for small talk to turn into real talk.

Does it matter if I start later?

Honestly, it’s worth starting rather than waiting. A University of Zurich team followed more than 17,000 young people in Germany and the UK who had no relationship experience at 16, surveying them every year until 29.4 Those who stayed single longer had a steeper drop in life satisfaction and more loneliness, especially in their late twenties, and a first relationship was followed by higher life satisfaction and less loneliness.4

That’s not a deadline, and it doesn’t mean a relationship fixes everything or that single people are worse off. It does mean the “I’ll start when I’m more ready” rule has a cost if it runs for years. Ready usually shows up after the first few tries, not before.

What to do this week, and this month

• Pick one weekly thing with the same faces. A run club, climbing gym, rec league, class or volunteer shift. Repetition does the approaching for you.
• If you use an app, use one. Cap it at a few short sessions a week and three or four conversations at once, so it never turns into a flood you delete by Thursday.
• Count reps, not results. Month one isn’t about a relationship. Asked one real question, sent one message first, said yes to one invite, suggested one plan with a day attached. Write them down.
• Have your one true line ready. “I’m newer to this, and I’d rather be honest than perform.” Then ask them something. Anyone who mocks it has told you something useful, early.
• Treat a cancellation as weather. A cancelled first plan is usually just someone’s Tuesday. Reschedule once, then let it go.
• Watch for the escape hatch. If you rewrite a message for an hour, only like people who can’t like you back, or delete apps on a loop, the problem may not be missing tips. It’s fear of being seen. If that’s constant or keeping you from things you care about, a licensed therapist is a smart next step, not a failure.

Hana’s first rep was small. On the cooldown she asked Ravi where he’d learned to run hills like that. It took nine seconds. Next Tuesday it’ll take less.

What doesn’t the research show?

• There’s no reliable public number for how many people in their 20s have never been in a relationship. Figures online vary wildly, so we don’t repeat them.
• The dating survey covers ages 22 to 35, not just your 20s,1 and its publishers hold a pro-marriage view, though the sample is nationally representative.
• The teen relationship figures are one poll and describe adolescence, not your 20s.2
• The familiarity study used strangers of the same sex getting acquainted, not romantic interest.3
• The Zurich study tracked people in Germany and the UK and shows patterns over time, not that singleness causes the decline.4
• The month-long plan is practical advice, not a tested program.