Hello everybody
So... I am 32-and-a-half years old. I've been single for nearly five years. My ex-boyfriend is about to get married, which feels pretty weird...
I love most things about my life right now, and in many respects it's pretty cool - enviable, some would say. I have a great job, I live in a great place, and there are some exciting things happening. But it still feels like something is missing.
A lot of my friends are now married, many now have babies. Most of them are at least in secure relationships. I am not even close to having any of that! It's really scary sometimes. I try to pretend to myself that I don't care, but it always catches up with me: I am lonely. I want a relationship. Love. Security. A family... I can't escape from that fact. I'm a human being after all.
I've been on my own for so long now, I've grown used to it. That being said, I am pretty lonely and would love a partner. But I just can't find one! And I'm quite puzzled as to where I'm going wrong.
Over the last five years, I have had a series of flings with men who just don't want to commit. They are quite happy to hang out with me and sleep with me - for a few weeks, even a few months sometimes. It will be quite intense - they will be really complimentary, be very attentive, want to see me all the time, call me all the time, make me a big part of their everyday life... and it will feel to me as though a relationship is developing. But I always end up sorely disappointed.
There's only so much of that you can take before you start wondering what's wrong with you. I keep blaming myself, thinking there must be something really unattractive about me that puts men off. But I don't know what it is. I think I am actually a pretty decent person. I'm adventurous, fun, loving, loyal, down-to-earth... my ex-boyfriends are always really complimentary about me. So I obviously wasn't a bad girlfriend (...in the days when I was somebody's girlfriend, not that I can really remember!)
So I know I can't be that awful. Yet here I am, thinking there must be something hideously wrong with me.
People tell me I've just had bad luck. I just don't know what to think any more. I know one thing is true and that is: I hardly ever meet new people. I only really meet men online; I don't really have any other way of meeting them. My social circles are fairly small. I am focusing on trying to get a better social life but it's really not that easy at my age... it doesn't happen overnight and to be honest I am still a bit flummoxed as to how I can realistically expand my social circles.
Anyway I really just wanted to see if anyone could offer me some kind of insight or perspective that I might not have already considered. Just to hear that someone is in the same boat would be reassuring, to be honest.
I'm so tired of being treated as expendable. Sometimes I wonder if I have it written on my forehead.