I feel too old for guys my age and it's making me miserable?

I'm a 25 year old woman. I've never been in a relationship because most of teenage and adult years were occupied with extreme social anxiety, depression and very low self esteem. The low self esteem resulted because of my parents especially my mom, calling me fat and telling me that clothes for girls my age don't really look good on me. I spend my teenage years wearing clothes that were made for women in their 40s, I never knew how to take care of my appearance so I never bothered. I used to binge eat when stressed a lot or purge, my weight fluctuated between severely anorexic to really overweight so i never knew my own body. I thought that guys my own age would never be interested in me (and I was right) so I spent most of my time alone, and that hasn't really changed except the fact that now I'm getting treatment for my mental issues and I'm a little more confident with myself. Still though, my dating life is non existent and my mom is making my mental health worse than it ever was. She always tells me I need to date older men (like 50s, 60s old) or assumes that im dating older men because according to her no 25 year old would be interested in me. Now that I'm older I realize that the reason I always had crushes on older men (even in my preteens) was because of this. When a guy my own age approaches me I don't know how to act, I always think that he would think I'm too ugly or too weird for him and that he would never like me the way I like him. I need this to stop and I don't know how to do it.

Submitted August 07, 2020 at 11:50PM

I'm a 25 year old woman. I've never been in a relationship because most of teenage and adult years were occupied with extreme social anxiety, depression and very low self esteem. The low self esteem resulted because of my parents especially my mom, calling me fat and telling me that clothes for girls my age don't really look good on me. I spend my teenage years wearing clothes that were made for women in their 40s, I never knew how to take care of my appearance so I never bothered. I used to binge eat when stressed a lot or purge, my weight fluctuated between severely anorexic to really overweight so i never knew my own body. I thought that guys my own age would never be interested in me (and I was right) so I spent most of my time alone, and that hasn't really changed except the fact that now I'm getting treatment for my mental issues and I'm a little more confident with myself. Still though, my dating life is non existent and my mom is making my mental health worse than it ever was. She always tells me I need to date older men (like 50s, 60s old) or assumes that im dating older men because according to her no 25 year old would be interested in me. Now that I'm older I realize that the reason I always had crushes on older men (even in my preteens) was because of this. When a guy my own age approaches me I don't know how to act, I always think that he would think I'm too ugly or too weird for him and that he would never like me the way I like him. I need this to stop and I don't know how to do it.