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Does anyone have advice on how to get more comfortable with being alone for the foreseeable future?
I broke up with a long term girlfriend a while ago (lovely woman, didn't want kids.) I discovered the dating market had gotten horribly worse during the relationship and I no longer have a chance; I've also roughly aged out of the bracket who can reasonably get married. I am going to spend the next forty years or so single and alone. I have intellectually accepted this but I'm still having extremely strong emotional reactions, and I still feel awful by myself.
I tried to talk to a therapist but of course he
a) rainmade me, with no intention of getting me to the point where I won't need therapy. (The overwhelming majority of therapists have never considered the idea of patients getting better, because most people going to therapists just want to feel special, not get better.)
b) told me that I wasn't going to be alone and didn't need to deal with that long term.
I'm not sure what I should do to establish a way to be calm and happy by myself; I'm frustratingly extroverted and need people to talk to and be close with. Can I train myself out of this?
Uh I mean. I'm sure you have your reasons, but I guess I'll suggest the obvious:
Are you sure you can't work it out with her? either with kids, or without? It sounds like she might be the one and only for you... otherwise, being alone is pretty tough, especially for
get ready for a life of ladies nights, mixers, and strip clubs.
no (speaking as a guy in a similar situation)
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I had the same problem and CBT (David burns, "Feeling Good") mostly fixed it. Not completely, I still feel a little lonely from time to time. But I am no longer the living stereotype of the seething incel.
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I'm not sure about the midlife dating market, but on the frustratingly extroverted side of things, I know people who have had a good experience with couch surfing, both visiting and hosting. One got married to someone from a local couch surfing meetup. I tried, and it was generally safe and fun, but I was personally insufficiently extroverted.
Yeah, that was pretty good around 2010 or so I hear, but collapsed a few years after.
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There is a weird sense of freedom that comes with truly believing you will never find another suitable relationship. It opens you up to trying weird things. If you believe everything that you do will leave you single and alone then there aren't any real consequences to your future relationships by trying new things and failing.
You could try weird/new things to break out of your thought pattern. In certain contexts you are correct that dating gets hard past a certain age, but you can change the context to make it easier. There are lots of places you can seek unconventional relationships, but you have tunnel-vision and have already dismissed them.
Also, if you are going to be alone forever you might want to look into communities that explore spiritually/contemplative/meditative practices to alleviate your suffering. Being connected to something larger than yourself may help provide a sense of meaning/purpose in your life.
I don't think you will be alone forever. I think you just have given yourself too many constraints on how to approach the problem and it is preventing you from discovering a clever solution.
Yeah, might be time to do what I want rather than chase the decaying hope I could be normal enough to find someone. I'm not sure what I do want, but that could be interesting.
I tried meditation like everyone else did in 2015, and I'm too ADHD to manage it, sadly.
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Even as savage as the dating market can be as you age, it doesn't mean you won't find a good relationship again. It will just take time, and from the state of dating apps I think you're better off pursuing this passively though attending social groups.
This can kill two birds with one stone. You can have people to talk to and hopefully get closer to over time while fulfilling your need for social interaction. I'm an introvert, but still get value out of attending meetups (where I've met girlfriends and friends over the years).
It's common for people to go through something like 3 different therapists before they find one that they click with. Don't presume all therapists will be like that guy. Even if I agree that you're unlikely to be alone longterm, it seems like the way he went about convincing you that that was the case was pretty blase.
As for being happy by yourself, you can hedge your bets. There must be some activity you enjoy doing by yourself. You don't need to do it all the time, but help fulfill the gaps in your free time between social events.
I mean, I've gone through half a dozen as an adult, but it took me a while to work out the common link: none of them want to fix you. Putting aside that they have no financial incentive to do so, they just don't see it as their job. From a now-deleted Twitter account:
Think about the median person who makes "men do X rather than go to therapy" jokes: they think that "going to therapy" is a religious ritual, and it gives them feelings of being a special person with Traumas who is being Treated. They have never considered the idea of getting better, so their therapist hasn't cultivated the idea either.
The overwhelming majority of therapists just want to treat people, not cure them, and there's no good way to filter out the tiny handful that actually have better plans. Since the going rate in my city is $400-600/hr, insurance haha you must be joking, I don't see much value in trying here. (This industry may be well intentioned but I think it's mostly evil.)
That is weird. I've had two therapists who I saw for a few months each, and they both were pretty clear about addressing my problem and getting me out of there. I did screen for serious CBTers though.
The screening for serious CBTers is what got you that. Until I hunted down a by-the-book CBT practitioner, the therapists I've seen have been eclectic talk therapists who followed no particular school and had no particular goals for my treatment -- and for whom, therefore, a well-defined timeline made no sense.
Things like "measurable goals," "progress tracking," "time-limited treatment," and "homework," are pretty foreign to a lot of more eclectic practitioners. I generally feel the field is utterly saturated with quackery and non-serious therapy styles that make no difference in people's lives. I get the sense this is what clients actually want -- someone to act as a soundboard without giving particular challenges. But that's exactly the opposite of what people dealing with mental illness truly need. I think the explosion of mentally well people visiting therapists has had something big to do with it.
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Did you have some sort of insurance with limited session coverage?
Nope, I was mostly paying out of pocket.
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Your therapist is most likely right on point b, but it sounds like he brushed it off when I don't think he should have. I've seen people of all ages get together, even married, and I don't think you should write your chances off just yet. For example, my uncle has had multiple girlfriends after my aunt's death 10 years ago - he is in his 60s and doing just fine romantically. He would've been remarried by now too, if not for some difficulties that are specific to his situation.
That said, while I think you're wrong about your chances with women I am sure it doesn't seem that way from where you stand. That's tough, and honestly I'm not sure how one might best tackle that issue. Maybe if your therapist doesn't want to talk about it, you might want to consider a new therapist or something.
As far as the question you asked, it's hard for me to conceive of needing to be around people because I love being alone. But maybe you need to find hobbies you enjoy which are solitary pursuits? It seems like maybe if you are feeling fulfilled and happy while you're alone, you will eventually find it easier to tolerate. I really don't know for sure though, that's just a wild guess.
Someone who was successful before continues to be successful again. I've never been married after 20 years of trying to date, so I don't think there's going to be much correlation between me and your uncle. Anyone who would consider marrying me would first ask "what did 20 years of women know that I don't?"
I've really accepted this, it's OK, I don't need platitudes about how it'll happen. I won't have kids and I will be alone. Litany of Tarski says to believe it. I just want to not end up sad and crying because I feel alone.
Well let me add another anecdote onto the pile, then. At 30 years old, I was not only single, I had never even been on a single date. Every time I asked a girl out, I was politely rejected (at best, sometimes worse). I was 100% certain I would die alone, having never even kissed a girl, and I had made my peace with that. That year (for reasons that aren't important), in a fit of pique I made an account on okcupid and I was able to actually get a date. I've now been married to that woman for 7 years.
I'm not telling you platitudes here. I'm trying to tell you, based on real personal experience, that we never know what's in store for us. I was 100% certain that I would be single forever, and I would've staked anything at all in a bet to that effect. But I was wrong. You might be right and you might actually be single for the rest of your life. The point is that I don't think you should treat it as a foregone conclusion, because it isn't. Just take it one day at a time and keep yourself open to the possibility that things might change for you, and it's impossible to predict.
Hope is the thing that kills me.
When I say that I'm single and having trouble, friends of mine always say "but you're so attractive, you should be killing it on Tinder/Hinge." This drives me literally insane. Men sometimes think I'm handsome, but women absolutely do not. I have empirical proof of this. I have A/B tested it on the dating apps; I have compared my match rates to others; I have heard the tiny handful of matches I got explicitly say "nah, you're not attractive enough to go out on a date with." I am ugly. Stop telling me I am not. It makes me really angry because I then have to answer why I'm such a failure even though I "should " succeed. So yeah, I'm sure it worked out for you and I'm happy for you. But saying stuff like this just makes me sadder about how I can't make it work.
Hence why I want to accept the truth of reality and move on.
It's not really about hope imo, it's more about being realistic. Instead of "I'm going to be alone forever, how do I cope", I would argue that your planning process should be "I'm alone right now, how do I cope". Don't assume what your future will look like, whether that's being single or not. I think that's the realistic (and healthier) approach.
Trust me, I do understand how you feel. In truth I doubt that 10 years ago I would've listened to what I'm saying now. The human brain is a real bitch that way. I do hope you can be at peace one way or the other, man.
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