To think 25 is too late to find the LOML

I met my life partner at 37, married at 39, baby at 40. I plan on staying with him for the rest of my life and love him dearly, but I think the notion of there being one single "love of your life" is daft crap peddled by commercial culture and is deeply unhelpful.

You sound like you would really benefit from undertaking a course of therapy to develop some proper self awareness and a deep understanding of your psychology, how your upbringing shaped your core beliefs and world view and how that's been impacting on your life circumstances (including boyfriends / partners).

You have ages - especially if you start this work now, and the benefit would mean you could sort yourself out now before you meet someone and have children, thereby not passing on your issues to them.

Showing my age, but I've now got London Boys 'Requiem' in my head...
"You're the love of my life, my life, my life
And I won't let you go now
This is a requiem for love
Our love, our love is a miracle now, oh
Like a thief in the night, the night, the night
I was begging for love
This is a requiem for-
Life has set me free, taking a chance on you and me
This is the story now
The story of our love"

That would make sense because I’ve never met a woman who actually talks like this.

What you need is a holiday......

This thread is batshit, tenner on it being deleted within 30 minutes! That being said, if OP and this sort of thinking is real, it’s made me even more resolute that my DD is never getting a smart phone!

Genuinely is 25 a typo? I could just about understand someone starting to wonder this at 35 or 45, but at 25 your adult life has barely got started. I'm trying to think if anyone I know had met the love of their life at 25. My sister had and I think one friend from school but everyone else was late twenties at least.
I would have a big shake up of how you are thinking about this though. Psychotic love, categorising other humans as 'high value', suppressing who you are - none of this is a healthy approach to anything.

A really expensive one!

that was mean

Agreed, some mean girl stuff right there. Hope you're ok OP.

Your brain doesn't even finish developing and maturing until the mid-to-late 20s! Perhaps that's part of OP's issue here...

I mean this kindly but I would imagine that your unrealisitc high expectations of what you think the love of your life needs to be, that is bubbling to the surface, is making potential partners think they're probably never going to be good enough so they move on pretty quickly as they probably think they are wasting their time.

No one is that perfect. I feel you might need to stabilise your expectations and understand that 'value' comes in many forms and shows itself when you least expect it.

Plus you're only 25. You need to work out your own worth and what is valuable to you first. At 25 I was an intense relationship with someone I thought was 'the one' but in reality it was toxic - I thought all the obsession and intensity was the mark of true love, but it wasn't and it all fell apart when I was 30 as you simply can't sustain that long term. I met my now DH of 16 years at 31 and he couldn't have been more opposite to my ex but absolutely showed me what true 'high value' is (even though I hate that term) - and it's not in height and salary and poem writing.

if he was really the love of your life you would have moved to Australia with him or he would have stayed?

your description of him being 'psychotically' in love with you is disturbing. True love has nothing psychotic about it.

25 is nothing at all. get out there and meet new people. join dating apps maybe?

Stop focusing on people being high or low value. In the kindest way you are probably giving off superior vibes to people.

That’s what I thought - if young women are now buying into the idea that you can rate people as being high or low value, rather than taking them as they come then we’re fucked!

OP people are not commodities and although modern dating has made potential dates into shopping lists of traits you will find that people are more complex than a collection of “high value attributes”. You may even find yourself falling in love with a man who - shock horror - didn’t go to university or god forbid is under 6 foot.

Step away from the apps, meet people, join groups, travel, have some life experiences that make you an interesting person to date and drop your fantasy of this man being the LOYL.

A) no he wasn’t or he wouldn’t have moved to the other side of the world.

B) because there’s no such thing as a singular love of one’s life, soulmate, twin flame or any other bollocks that suggests you might “miss your one chance”

C) at your age your brain is still developing - who you are now and who you will be in 5 years are worlds apart. Meeting someone you feel “psychotically attracted” to in your 20s is no guarantee that you’ll marry, have kids and live happily ever after

I met the love of my life, but he moved away to Australia for a great job and found a wife a few years later.

Unfortunately you obviously wasn’t the love of his life. You’re 25 there’s definitely time to find someone.

You need to get some counselling to get out of these really unhealthy mindsets.

Theres no such thing as a high value man or woman, and thinking in those terms just sets yourself up to ignore lovely people you could fall in love with.

The concept of LOML is flawed too. Psychotically crazy in love doesn’t sound healthy. There isn’t just one right person for everyone. As PPs have said, if you were the one for him, he wouldn’t have gone off to Australia. Maybe he recognised the unhealthy dynamic?

25 is incredibly young. Most people haven’t met the person they will marry, if the do end up deciding to marry at all, by 25.

I think you need to let go of the whole "love of your life" thing. I don't think that exists. These days, more people are separating when they're older than ever, showing that what was right in your 20s might not be in your 60s, etc.

I met my partner when I was 27. I love him very much and he loves me. I can see us growing old together, as can he. Whether that happens as we both age and change, I don't know. That's just realistic. You don't just have to have one partner your whole life, and it's never too late to meet one.

Ahh I remember being 25 and thinking I was oh so old and together in life, that if it wasn’t happening right in that moment then clearly it was never going to happen. I’m in my 30s now and took the stick out my arse, stopped thinking 27+ was old and relaxed into life. That’s when all the best bits happened. Take the stick out OP, live life and have fun. You’re too young to be feeling like an old spinster.

You are posting different threads about different relationship issues.
My troll radar is up (and reported). If you are genuine then being 25 doesn't mean you have not met the one.

At 25 you should be test-driving as many men as possible not worrying about the 'love of your life', whatever that means.

I don’t think people are delighting in your misery. Just pointing out that you’re looking at things in a way that is unhealthy for you.

Don't be silly

I missed that it was several years before the high value man married his Australian wife. So you were what, 20 when you were with him? Barely out of childhood. No wonder you have such a romanticised view of him and that relationship. With respect you need to grow up and move on.

He's not the love of your life if he left you to move to Australia and marry someone else. May be time to let that one go.