Shouting Off Mountain's page

So, I’ve been a fairly introverted/solitary person for quite a while now. Long story short, some s+~& happened when I was a kid, got scared of people in general, had to learn to “live” on my lonesome.
Post-secondary education allowed me to come out of that whole, allowing me to make friends with similar tastes, in similar fields, though no close friends (which is something I feel I distinctly lack). Took me a fairly long time to consider them friends though. At the time, I was busy enough with schoolwork that a lot of things simply didn’t stay in my mind. I had better stuff to do. And I liked what I did. Despite still being a basically solitary & introverted person, I was able to get a lot more comfortable around people.
Now I’m doing graduate studies in something I love, no money worries (though hardly well off either), but it’s in a different city, so obviously lose most of the friends I made. Like I said, we weren’t “close” friends (though some were closer than other), so lack of convenience or shared online activities means I have effectively lost them. I have a lot more free time than during my undergrad, but nothing to do with it. I’ve gotten very involved in the local university gaming club, making “friends”, gaming a lot. It’s nice to have non-work/school friends to deal with, and it allows me to socialize doing something that interests me. But it’s only so much time.
While I do seem to be leading something that, to my teenage self, might have been seen as a charmed life, it’s never enough is it. The free time has unfortunately got me back into the ruminations of my younger self, turning over ideas in my mind for longer than they should be, leaving nothing but the problems. Luckily, I’m not in a bad space, so it isn’t destructive. It’s mainly distracting.
The lack of close friends is particularly aggravating, and the fact that I’m far from my close family only worsens it. I’ve got no sense of physical or emotional intimacy. I haven’t gotten more than a handshake in the last month. It gets to you, you know? And talking to someone over the phone, or skype, just doesn’t feel right. And doesn’t deal with the lack of physical intimacy.
And that’s not even counting sexual frustration. As you can probably guess I’ve never been in a couple. In my last year of undergrad I got the courage to ask out a few people that interested me (no reciprocation unfortunately), and I was happy with myself at the time for at least putting myself out there. But I have a hard time finding people who interest me from the get-go. A person can be very outwardly attractive (both in personality & physique), and while that’s nice, I just can’t care enough to ask someone out until I get to know them some (sorry folks, but 99% of us just aren’t that interesting, me included). I just don’t have a lot of normal contact with the opposite sex, so statistically I’m unlikely to meet someone that interests me in the first place. And the usual masturbation just doesn’t feel quite satisfying recently (though its quality can be improved). I want to put myself out there more, but my own moral stance against going after someone purely for sex (which I honestly don’t think I could successfully pull off anyway) is conflicting with growing lust. It’s been cycling up & down over the last few years, and each time it’s getting more significant. And that’s on top of the whole “I don’t really think I can attract anyone anyway” thing. If I could find somebody that interests me in the first place.