Were you popular with the opposite sex as a teenager ?

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I fully appreciate this thread is somewhat trivial compared to others on here, but would you say you were popular with the opposite sex when you were a teenager say 13-18 years old.

Also how has this experience shaped future relationships you have had ?

Myself I can safely say I was not as when I was at secondary school i had bad skin, had braces and was always told I was fat and ugly and got bullied alot.

Girls always preferred the guys with good skin etc

I feel that this experience has really wreaked my confidence as i have always felt ugly and inferior to others.

Glasses, trains tracks and frizzy hair definitely got better as I've aged. But I went to an all girls boarding school. When I ditched the glasses and braces and left school, I did get some male attention.

No I was not popular with the opposite sex in my late teens which was a good few years before internet dating became a thing. I have always had plenty of female friends though.

I was discussing this with a friend recentlyish, and we thought that people who had a 'proper' relationship in their teens that maybe lasted a year or so, were much happier more content adults.

We also thought those people had taken their experiences a bit for granted. Leaving home with the level of self-esteem and sense of being lovable that their experiences had given them, clearly made them much more resilient and understanding of relationships than I found myself to be.

There was a thread on here a while ago about women who attract other women like bees to honey, and the attributes they had. It was mentioned that many of these people came from happy secure families and had quite sheltered upbringings in which it hadn't occurred to them that people wouldn't want to be friends or be around them. While these women are genuinely nice, many thought they were often a little naive about the experiences us mere mortals had navigating social experiences.

No, not at all. But ignored not bullied. Bullying is awful, I'd really recommend therapy.

I got sporty at university and was then pretty fit plus a lot more confident, and it's confidence that makes the difference. Team sport/solo sport in groups is a lot of fun. I still got 'nice legs, shame about the face' but by that time I didn't care.

No I wasn’t popular at school. I was objectively quite pretty looking back (I wouldn’t have said that at the time, I felt really ugly due to the lack of male attention plus some bullying from popular girls who would taunt me saying they’d kill themselves if they were as ugly as me and that I’d die alone and never have anybody that loved me etc) but was not part of the in-crowd largely because I was very academic and always top of the class which made me instantly unfanciable basically. I was also a bit shy and I went through puberty late and was one of the youngest in my year which didn’t help. As others in my year looked like women when I still looked like a little girl.

It really affected my self esteem and sadly even now in my 40s I still hear the taunts of those girls now in my head especially as I am alone after leaving an abusive marriage. Having said that, at university I WAS popular and had a string of boyfriends and loads of friends of both sexes and definitely felt part of an in crowd. That helped loads with my confidence and self esteem and perhaps if I hadn’t been in an abusive marriage it would have completely negated what came before, but the abusive marriage just raked up all those feelings again and I feel just like I did as a teen except without the hope that it will get better in the future at Uni. I get frustrated with myself as I know confidence and self esteem should lie within and not without but it’s hard to get over that sort of background.

Not really. I had a couple of boys interested but I gave off quite aloof vibes - not from over confidence, quite the opposite as I had no confidence at all.

I was averagely pretty, nothing special but nothing hideous back then. I'm aging pretty badly now though, but haven't been on the market for a long time so no idea how is fare these days. I definitely have more confidence in who I am though, so I think that would chance things massively.

No not at all. I don't think I was ugly, but I never came across as feminine or interested in being pleasant to boys. I probably seemed grumpy and awkward. I felt like there was something wrong with me, then met my first boyfriend (now husband of 30 years) when I was 24. It wasn't a great way to experience that time of life, and my marriage has not turned out to be so good all these years later...

I could say the exact same. Ugly ducking. Bit fat, bad clothes. Autistic. Braces, frizzy hair. Spots. Poor posture. No confidence.

I barely spoke to a boy the whole of high school.

Got asked out once, by the ugliest boy.

Made me feel like no one would ever want me.

But I really blossomed later and looked pretty decent. Got attention and lapped it up.

Both times girls hated me!

Very. But oddly I never thought about it to the time, as its just the way it was. I suppose if anything I assumed that my experiences of how boys behaved were the same as everyone else's, and it was just how boys treated girls. Hanging round, showing off, acting like they were your friend because they wanted to date you. That they were a nuisance basically.
I suppose the biggest impact on my life is that I assume men will be at least superficially nice to me. To open doors, offer drinks, compliment me, pay attention to what i say etc and that often it won't be sincere. I suppose if you summed it up, I'd say I'm cynical and mistrustful as a result.

I was an ugly duckling until college. Bad skin, crap hair, no idea how to do my makeup. I was chubby for most of secondary school, then developed an eating disorder in college and obsession with exercise, started caring about my face and hair and became incredibly vain but I did look fantastic. I looked like a supermodel, even though that is me blowing my own horn, and I had terribly unhealthy habits to maintain my figure. From 16-19 I had a lot of attention from men. Then I met my DP, got very comfy, piled on a few stone and had a baby. Now if I ever catch a bloke looking at me I tend to assume I've food on my face or something 😂 being stereotypically beautiful wasn't worth the mental upkeep, nor time in gym, in hindsight. But now I've got no one to impress particularly I would think that. I still like to think I've got a pretty face but I'm also haggered and knackered.

No, I was a spotty nerd. So I concentrated on interests and sports.

Strangely, in my 30s I connected with the guy everyone wanted to date, in school, and we have been married for over 30 years.

Up until I was 16, I wasn't even noticed by the opposite sex.
Going into sixth form however I did blossom and began getting a lot of attention.

Absolutely not: Bad hair, terrible dress sense and a bit of puppy fat. I was teased and bullied by the opposite sex, but they were never interested until just before I went to university. (Once I hit 18 I dropped to a size 8-10 and have remained that way.)

I think that experience led to some really shitty choices in my 20s and 30s, as I cheated several times in my LTR because I couldn't get over the novelty of men finding me attractive.

Since my mid to late 30s, however, I have realised that men finding me physically attractive isn't something great, because 99% of time they have zero interest in me as a person, and I now recoil at the objectification. (Something I imagine won't even be a thing for much longer anyway, as I am getting close to 40).

Nah. Speccy nerd (and being mixed race in a mostly-white school didn't help in terms of seeing myself as attractive). Was friends with several boys as mostly hung out with other nerds, all but one turned out to be gay.

Made up for all that when I discovered clubbing and contact lenses in my early 20s.

I think that trajectory worked out quite well in terms of being able to focus on studying at school, learning not to be really bothered by male attention/lack of it, then being mature and knowing what I wanted when male attention did come along.

Not in the slightest. I didn't even kiss a boy until I was 22! I was horrendously bullied throughout secondary school, which meant I didn't go to any social events such as discos, parties, nor after school clubs etc. Just turned up at 9am and went home at 3.30, as that was bad enough and I had no wish at all to see class mates etc outside school, not even the ones who didn't bully me - my self confidence was ruined, so I didn't even trust the classmates who seemed nice and friendly! Even during lessons, I couldn't engage with classmates and usually just sat in a corner somewhere hoping no one would sit next to me!

Started to grow some self confidence in college and then when I started working, when I realised that most people weren't shits after all, and most were actually pretty nice and friendly. That took a few years, and then I was "ready" to start socialising and dating etc when I was 22! For some reason I went from never having a boyfriend to having 3 lads asking me out at the same time - must have been giving off some "I'm ready" vibes, probably just confidence really! Annoying I had to choose 1 to get serious with, as I'd probably have "tried" all three if they'd come along at different times! But hey-ho! Sod's law, just like buses, you wait forever then 3 come along at once!

Definitely not at school. I got my first Saturday job at 17 and was really quite bemused when one of the apprentices started showing an interest in me as no one ever had except.
Around 18/19 I grew in confidence and started enjoying going out and dressing up and I had a few glory years then!

Nope no interest at all. I was tall, very skinny with a big nose and terrible acne.

Not at all!

10 years later in my mid-late 20s I really came into my own though and was beating men off with a stick.

The early years of insecurity left me ridiculously grateful for male attention and I settled with all sorts of terrible men, with terrible consequences. It took until middle age to sort my shit out.

Yes, but I was skinny with big boobs. I attracted a lot of the wrong sort of men. I was stalked. Two boys once showed up at my house and told my mother they thought I was ‘a ride’. My mother lived in perpetual fear of me getting pregnant. One friend fell out with me because her boyfriend decided he fancied me…etc. etc.

Despite not being attractive I had a man try to rape me when I was 15, which additionally made me extremely wary of men. So when I did get approached I'd either be massively shy or say something really prickly and scare them off.

Like @user1497207191 I then had some sort of awakening at 23, got 3 offers at once and confidently selected the wrong one :D

I wasn't at all popular with the boys when I was at school. I certainly wasn't considered "top tier" but then again, I think I was quite blinkered as to which boys I would consider!

I became instantly "more attractive" at uni, once I was released from the rigid social hierarchy that controlled our school. And I consider myself an attractive 40yo now - more people flirt with me now than when I was 16!

Yes I was. I was sporty and clever with big boobs. Teenage boys seemed to like that!

Not especially. Nothing offputting you could put your finger on; I had all the right physical attributes, and attracted male attention at non-school events, but I think I wasn't seen as sufficiently amenable. I knew of boys who had distant crushes on me, but they never made a move, any more than I did with boys I had crushes on myself.

Pre-16 I was a spotty nerdy tomboy and just fancied boys from afar. My (younger) sister was deemed the attractive one and got all the attention. I thought I'd never have a boyfriend.

Then from 16 I somehow became attractive and had loads of lads after me (not even sure what changed as I was still spotty, short-haired and a geek ...). It went to my head and I snogged someone else's boyfriend at a party and it was all over the school. Still aged 16 I lost my virginity to my first proper boyfriend and told a friend and she was absolutely gobsmacked that I'd ended up having sex before her!

Yes, more so from around age 15 when I grew boobs.

I was quite reserved around boys though, so never had a proper boyfriend till I was 18.

I didn't bother with boys at school. I thought there would be a much wider and better choice at university. I was right.