The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
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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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