Accepting being alone

LegacyUser

Very similar thread to many I've read on here but I'm a single woman, aged 29. Pretty much also been single. I had one relationship of about a year 5 years ago. Dated a lot of other people but never for more than 6/8 weeks.

I understand that I may yet meet someone but I'm also trying to come to terms with the fact I may not. Plenty of people don't. Or not until they are much older at least. Right now I feel a huge hole in my livve where a partner should be and while my live is amazing right now in most other ways I can't help but get quite down over it. Even it's impact on things like my living situation or ability to have children.

While my logical brain knows that it's a good 80-90% luck, I can't help questioning what's wrong with me or why I'm not good enough. This gets worse the older I get as people seem less willing to let new people into there lives. The last guy I was seeing I was mad about. I thought there was an instant connection, he said all the right things but we both had busy schedules. I'm more than happy to rearrange and find time for people I care about but he wasn't and after almost three months we'd only actually met up 5 times. It made me feel like ****. Why was I the ****ing bottom of his to-do list?

I'm pretty but not exactly traditionally attractive so I never get much attention which doesn't help my self confidence either.

I'm just really struggling accepting the fact that this might be it? I'm not career driven at all but that might have to be where I get my fulfilment from or I might have to be a single mother if children are important to me or I could easily be flat-sharing for another 10 years or i might never experience real committed love. All of those are such hard pills to swallow but I feel like I'm holding myself back from getting the most out of live if I don't overcome this.

StinkyMunkey

Try one of the dating apps, it's a good way to find like minded people. Or get yourself a hobby, another good way to meet like minded people.

There is someone out there for you, you just have to get yourself out there looking.

SaltSweatSugar

OP, my heart goes out to you. I was in your shoes a few months ago right down to not feeling good enough and wondering what was wrong with me. Let me tell you, there is absolutely nothing wrong with you. You are good enough! You’re still young, lots of people are settling down later in life. I think a lot of people our age have a freak out about the future and having a family. I know I did when the last guy I was with broke up with me. I was you. I had a taste of what it was like to be in a relationship with a great guy that didn’t work and I still miss him and being in that relationship. I want that future with a husband, a house and babies and I’ve also had to consider that it might not happen.

Don’t put too much pressure on yourself. You say you have a lot going for you which is a great sign. As regards meeting new people, are you sporty or active? I always recommend tag rugby to people as I found it a fun, great way to meet people. People of all level of fitness play and it’s great craic. Or you could try the meetup website if there’s one for where you live. Dating apps can be cesspools and if you don’t feel great about yourself, it can do more harm than good. Taking up a hobby or meeting people with common interests through a group is a great way to start. You never know what can grow from a friendship.

I know it sounds cliche but looks aren’t everything. Yeah it’s important but a great personality is just as important. A person can be the most beautiful person in the world but if they have the personality of a dishcloth they’re not the whole package.

With regards to you not feeling good enough or feeling crap about yourself, would you consider going to counselling to try and work through those issues? It’s not for everyone, and it doesn’t mean that there’s something wrong with you but I’ve been going since last year and I’ve found it’s helped me immensely. I’ve discovered why I had that feeling of not being good enough and now I’m working through it with my therapist. I’m so much happier in myself than I have been in years. It’s hard, but I do think it’s something that could help you.

Skibunny77

I met my fiance at 38. After years of questioning myself, it was the clichéd easy connection. We planned and fell pregnant at 40. I am blissfully happy. What I am most grateful for is that I enjoyed my single years. Yes I wondered and had my tearful and lonely days but in general, I enjoyed my life and the people in it. Meeting someone is pure luck. Finding joy and happiness in the every day is a choice. Try not to project into the future. I was in a gang of single girls, all of whom met fabulous partners in our late 30s. Those of us who maintained a positive outlook definitely had more fun and a happier life than those who didn't. I know this might sound like trite advice but you can't control who you meet but you can control living in the now, not projecting into a lonely future etc. Look for the happy in now.

ginandtonicsky

I understand how you feel, especially as you e always been single & that can bleed into a kind of despair over meeting someone.

However, 29 is young! You have plenty of time to meet someone. The number one thing you can do to increase your chances is to change your mindset. So, so many women feel the way you feel & let it affect their self esteem and have a panicked approach towards dating and a negative attitude towards it that creates this self fulfilling prophecy when it comes to the men they meet and the dating experiences they have.

What you need is a bit of short-term pessimism and long term optimism approach towards dating. 90% of the men you meet will be the wrong ones that will go nowhere - keep that in your mind when you’re dating. Long term, statistically it’s likely you will meet someone, so just see the dates and non starters and rejections as a necessary part of the process. And build the best life for yourself right now. Get happy! Career, social life, fitness, family and friends. Nurture them all.

For the mindset stuff I’d recommend counselling, specifically talk therapy. It’s not easy or a quick fix, but it can really help you to build your sense of sense worth without your single status playing into it, and it really helps with boundary control and the negative emotions around it.

leggo

I wouldn’t necessarily go as far as to say it’s good that you accept you could be alone forever. But it’s also not necessarily a bad move to make peace with being alone for now and just focusing on building a happy, independent life, while remaining open to the possibility of meeting someone. It’s pretty much the only way to stay sane while single these days.

What’s worth considering is that your mindset may be unwittingly fuelling your situation. Because you feel this way it can set into motion the exact circumstances you’re looking to avoid. So if someone really wants to meet someone and make it work, often without meaning to they can try too hard and give off the wrong vibes, and so on. They say the trick to meeting someone is to stop looking, and there’s a lot to that.

What you describe when it comes to relationships, in terms of being willing to make time etc, sounds like you’re well capable of having a happy one if/when it comes along. So if you were to build a happy life not needing anyone then adapt if circumstances changed, you seem perfectly able to do that. Why not try that approach for a while, instead of being so final that it’ll ‘never’ happen? Just live your life and make it a happy one on your own terms and don’t try to control the outcomes outside of circumstances that are actually within your control. Play the best hand you’re dealt at all stages. A side benefit of this is that it is also a really attractive quality in people. Do this for a while and I bet you start to see different results without even trying.

Yermande

On the issue of age, a friend of mine is in his mid-40s. He's struggled with alcohol over the years and it stopped him from meeting anyone. He's a lovely man and very deserving of an equally lovely woman, but to be brutally honest I thought that ship had sailed and that he was destined to be alone for the rest of his life.

I'm so happy to say that I was wrong. I met him for coffee recently and he told me that he's fallen in love with a mutual friend (they kept it very quiet!). She has a young child from her previous relationship. So all of a sudden he's with the love of his life and he's now also in a parental role to a lovely little kid that he thinks the world of.

So happy for them. My mate was down and out, or so I thought, but never say never.

I don't want to terrify the OP with the prospect of another decade or two of waiting, but I guess my point is that love can come out of nowhere and change your whole world very, very quickly.

So don't give up. You seem like a really nice person. And forget all of this "conventionally attractive" nonsense. Somewhere out there is the person that will be absolutely floored by you the second you walk into a room. And eventually you'll cross paths and all of this will be a thing of the past.

Tell me how

OP, as SaltSweatSugar suggested, a good therapist can be life changing in this space. Good is subjective to some degree, it has to be someone you connect with and feel they are helping you to understand and act on feelings and thoughts not just someone who is the most expensive or your friend/colleague said really helped them.

You will look back in years to come and think, 'Wow, I didn't realise how young I still was at 29!'. I'm not saying that to dismiss your concerns, but to encourage you to think positively.

Daisy78

You can meet a partner at any age, people do so all the time. In this day and age dating is a tough gig. People flake out for the smallest of reasons, far too much emphasis is placed on looks and too little on character. So don’t be too hard on yourself. The thing is you are very likely to meet someone, but you could be 42 and not 29 as you had hoped for. It is not so much accepting being alone forever as it is letting go the idea of what coupledom might look like for you, perhaps they might be separated with a kid, maybe you won’t have children of your own. I think women have been so conditioned into seeing their thirties as some sort of arbitrary finish line, if they haven’t managed to cross it with a man (preferably a husband) then it’s game over. Which is daft really. It might be better to tell yourself a different story, one where you do meet someone but the timing of which is left to the gods.

I’m in my forties now (just!) and I can say that my thirties were brilliant, but most of that decade I was single and didn’t have a lot of success with dating and men. I met lots of great people, achieved things I never thought I would and in general had opportunities which I never would have had. I always tried to ensure that my singleness (and any discontent that accompanied it) never overshadowed the positives because that can so easily happen. Look at the good things in your life, focus on them rather than what is not working. I am sure that there is nothing wrong with you in any sense, you have just have had some bad luck to date. But if you keep your attitude positive, be open to new experiences and people and keep an open mind as to timing your circumstances might change for the better.

wiggle16

Hi OP

I don't have much to add to the advice already given, but you really need to remember: you are only 29. There is no way you should be even thinking about accepting being alone for the rest of your life, or that "this is it". Because it isn't, not by any stretch of the imagination.

How have you usually gone about meeting people in the past? I assume you've been using tinder or one of its cousins? It's very easy to get fatigued with dating apps, I know, but I wouldn't give up on them either, if you've been using them. It's a matter of having a thick skin and not taking it personally if a person you text for a week suddenly falls off the face of the Earth or a conversation ends up fizzling out, because very often it's got nothing to do with you. It's often the same story with dating, there could be any number of reasons why a person may lose interest or simply stop dating, many of them having nothing to do with you. You just need to persevere and try to enjoy yourself along the way.

I know it's hard (believe me I do), but you really need to find a way to change your mindset and give yourself another chance. You've been able to hold someone's interest for 6-8 weeks in the past - so you are doing something right and obviously men find you attractive, meaning that there is no definable reason why you would be incapable of getting into a long term relationship. You have done it before, after all!

I'm probably not the best person to be giving advice considering my own love life... but I will tell you this: be bold. Don't be afraid to be the one to approach someone, to suggest swapping numbers, to suggest meeting up, to let them know you're interested. Or to call it a day if you feel your time is being wasted.

People can find love at any age, no one should ever give up on that if it's what they want - but you are definitely way too young to be thinking like this in the first place.