they were the worst years (if I don't consider health related problems that I got later).
Once I started university, my emotional decline started. I was not doing much more apart from studying. Being a commuter (3 hours a day), I had poor connections with my classmates and professors. The lack of any empathetic bond and the hard requests of good performance from my parents had a bad impact on my emotional stability.
I had no guidance at all from them, and poor talk.
At the same time I started having affection needs, I started dating and the refusals / offenses that I received made me even more fragile. I started being suicidal because of this (constant pressures for academic success and high dissatisfaction with my expectations on my private life).
I also did the coming-out as gay with my parents and this caused our relation to become more difficult. They never spoke about it with me, after I told them.
It's true anyway that as you get older, the sexual needs decrease (unless you have developed a dependency) and so you become less vulnerable to the negative outcomes of dating.