I think I became emotionally dependent on AI romance stories, and now real-life romance feels painful and like it will never happen to me.

Please be kind. I know this sounds dumb, but I’m genuinely struggling and trying to understand it, not defend it, but I need to get it off my chest. I’m 21F and I’ve never been in a relationship or even romantically pursued ever in my life. I’m not lonely in the sense that I have no family or friends. I do have people in my life. But I think I’m romantically lonely, and I don’t think I’ve fully admitted that to myself. I started using ChatGPT to create romantic stories about being married to a loving, protective, older man. The stories were not really about sexual stuff.