giving in

My question is should I just let other people set me up instead of pursuing someone myself?

In the past when I've pursued partners on my own I've eventually had friends tell me I was going for the wrong people and try and push me towards women who I wasn't interested in. Part of it was not being physically attracted to them and another part was that I felt they saw me as too weak to find someone on my own and that left me feeling incredibly miserable as I felt I would never have any choice who I could be with.

I can be very shy with the opposite sex sometimes but there's some other stuff I want to share.

Even though I can be shy I have mustered up the courage to approach and I have had some success but when things go wrong I would end up back at square one and because of the "advice" I would get I was often left feeling like I shouldn't be doing anything in the first place - the whole "if you go looking for it you won't find it" deal. Well I wouldn't look for it and nothing would happen anyway.

Putting aside "shyness" I often felt that the "advice" I recieved was completely out of perspective - one "friend" in particular (I no longer speak to this person) was often out of a job and asking for money all the time, then he had the arrogance to be so condecending and self righteous about what I should be doing with relationships I figured he saw this "advice" and diong so much for me that he deserved everything he asked of me - I came so close to beating him into next week sometimes - and I could've easily done it - I've trained in a couple of martial arts and I work out reasonably often as well so I could've snapped him like a twig!

I've often told myself that maybe I just shouldn't be with someone - that I wasn't really shy, putting aside meeting people in a dating situation there are plenty of times where being "shy" would have meant not earning a paycheck - I've worked in hospitality most of my working life (I have decade under my belt) so not only do I have to be a customer service person I've had to deal with cutting off drunk people who with threaten and abuse you like you would not believe - I would be shaking like a leaf sometimes but I still had to do it because it was my job - and if I didn't do it it could mean fines from liquor licensing - loss of income - and criminal negligence in some cases (I may be exaggerating a little but if you have friends who work in industry ask around - although I do live in Australia and I understand some parts of the world are more leanient)

When I posted "giving in" I mean exactly that - I haven't really had it in me to pursue anyone for a long time (some harmless flirting here and there - but that's it) and I've spent way too much time drinking my woes away in strip clubs and basically not doing anything conductive to meeting someone. So to me maybe I should just let other people set me up and go with it. I can't be good at everything and I guess maybe it would be better to let others do some of the work for me - even if they seem condecending and arrogant about it everything in life takes work and you have to deal with unpleasant situations and people at the best of times. I feel like I've let my pride get in the way of a lot of things and everyone ends up going through bad relationships.

Everyone says not to settle for someone you don't want but the very same people have often been the ones who have pushed me to go with someone I wasn't interested in. Maybe I need to go through some absolutely horrible relationships before I can actually meet somenone I want and the whole thing is really frustrating the heck out of me! I guess I just really want to put aside the BS and just get the job done - just do it with no whinging or complaining! If I have something there that I can actually do (i.e. pursuing someone I'm being set up with even if I'm not really interested in them) then at least I can do something instead of feeling so powerless.

Any comments, thoughts, flames are appreciated!