Search Results: let him down gently

I'm 20, i've never had a girlfriend and i'm beginning to fear that i'm an unaware incel or nice guy. I did research and even asked a few close friends what they thought. But my research was inconclusive and while friends don't think I am, their observations might be a little biased. So i'd like to get a unbiased opinion.

I didn't care about girls until I was 13; i've have asked 3 girls out over the past 7 years. They all said: "i'm a nice guy... just not their nice guy". Their wording is concerning, but as I was good friends with these girls at the time, they might have just been letting me down gently.

I struggle to socialize, let alone flirt. I would sometimes buy girls small gifts before asking them out, but that was because I was unsure how to flirt;it wasn't: "but you have to love me! I spent £ on you!" I never thought I was owed a girlfriend; if I liked them and thought there was a chance they might like me, i'd ask them out.

Incels/nice guys tend to hate women after rejection, but I don't. I would be hurt at the time (especially the first) but that's their decision; they have a right to turn me down. A couple girls have asked me out before, but I didn't feel the same way and turned them down. I feel bad, but i'm also in my right to turn down relationships where I don't feel the same way right?

While I look forward to sex, it isn't the only thing I look for in a woman: I don't care if she doesn't have the biggest boobs or butt. It might sound cheesy, but what I care about most is companionship. A partner to share my life with. I wouldn't fixate on sex so much if it wasn't for me being single at age 20 not being the social norm.

I'd like to think i'm not an incel or at the very least, i'm not anymore. If I am, please help me stop.

I think it's more to do with my social ineptitude and lack of confidence which make me feel I have nothing to offer a girl. Iv'e been going to the gym, having therapy and taking up new hobbies in the hopes of improving myself.

Right, so I'm tutoring this girl in English Literature for her A-levels; part-time, for about two hours once a week. Been tutoring her for a few months now, and her grades have improved quite a bit, up from the low to mid C's to straight A's. She's 17 (just), so she is legal. And she's just my type. Cute, pretty, slim, petite, quirky; a bit shy, modest and introverted at first, but enthusiastic and effervescent when she comes out of her shell. And she's been doing that a lot more recently; she took her AS level exams last Wednesday, and at the end of our last tuition session on Sunday, she confessed to me, and asked if we could start dating. What should I do?

I want to accept, I really do; she's a lovely girl, and she never fails to bring a smile to my face. She's also the only girl who's ever confessed to me in my life, so there's that. But even so, she is still only 17, and while I don't look it, and don't have much life experience to show for it (for instance, I'm still as much of a virgin as she is), I'm 31; that's a big age gap, even if her mum and mine are about the same age, and have been friends on-and-off since the early 80's. I asked her for a bit of time to decide, promised her I'd let her know come our next tuition session tomorrow; what do you lot think I should do? Embrace our feelings for each other, and start dating her? Or deny them, and turn her down as gently as possible? And either way, do you feel that I should keep tutoring her or not?