To absolutely hate being single?

[pushingthroughcracks]

Sorry to be so pathetic and in many ways negative but stay with me.

I am battling a number of personal demons and I feel alone and unloved. I am trying really hard to make it different but unfortunately it isn't working!

I've not had a great time of late, I do try to speak to and text friends but they are almost always busy with their own families and it can become a difficult line between putting yourself out there for friendship and companionship and getting in people's way. I was surprised and a tiny bit put out when having driven for then best part of two hours on Monday to see a friend we had coffee and then just over an hour and a half later she cheerily got up and said she had to go because of reasons to do with her family. I didn't say anything because it isn't exactly helpful for future relations to whinge and whine about not spending a required number of hours with me, and perhaps she just hadn't thought that it took a not inconsiderable amount of time and money to see her. Anyway this is beside the point but I'm just trying to explain when I do try to initiate contact sometimes things don't go to plan!

I do try to get out of the house as much as possible. I live in a city and I do try to get involved and do as many things as possible but a lot of the time I end up in a position where I have to do things on my own and it isn't really much fun. As well as the impact on finances which is another source of stress: having to run a home - mortgage and all bills and car repairs and so on from one salary takes its toll.

I've joined over the past five years or so various dating websites - guardian soulmates and match.com and plenty of fish. None worked for me in the time I was on there. For some reason the only person wanting to strike up a conversation with me on match.com was a man from Manchester which is some 300 miles away from where I do live, and while I've nothing against Manchester as a place I would like to think there's someone amongst my millions of neighbours who I could have a relationship with! Yet I do feel I should be coupled up with one person and any social life should stem from doing things with other couples. This certainly seems to be the impression I have from scanning my eyes around those around me.

I do know, before anyone says, that loving with a cruel or neglectful or ignorant partner would be worse but that's not really what I'm about here.

I do volunteer work within my community, and I do have friends although they are somewhat scattered around this country and abroad and a couple of friendships are sadly waning a little at the moment despite attempts on my part to rekindle them. I also go to the gym but don't find this a social activity (I don't go with this expectation.)

So I do feel a little as if I am going around in circles where in order to meet someone in need to be a grounded individual with a sparkly social life yet having a sparkly social life when ones friends are coupled up and you have all the financial limitations of being single, is hard!

I am in a rut and don't want to go on like this but I don't know how to change things!

The other issue with volunteering is the gender ratio. I have had 3 volunteering jobs in the last 3 years. Every single one of my fellow volunteers at each of those jobs was female :(

Volunteering roles with better gender balance ime are outdoor/wildlife or volunteer with blue light services (no not PCSO) where roles can include
Diversity / Community Engagement
Recruitment event assistance
Crime Prevention / Fire Safety
Role Player in training exercises

Inseenodust 2 out of those 3 were outdoor volunteering roles. All women.

I'd dispute that, Fatrascals. Full time grad school complete with hour and a half commute and compulsory extra evening classes, part time job, one ongoing volunteering job, church (also an hour and a bit journey each way). That's before you add on my 'hobbies.' Yes lots of single people will have more free time than if they had kids, but it's certainly not true of everyone.

Oh, I appreciate that. Commute is brilliant for learning language vocab and doing course-related reading, sometimes a book I actually want to read for pleasure if I'm lucky. What I mean is that it's not time that can be substituted for volunteering/blind dating etc. I totally get that I wouldn't be fitting everything I do in if I had kids- there are others on my programme who have kids, the course and their kids takes up all their time and they don't work or do anything for themselves. They are financially supported by their partners. I don't have kids or a partner and therefore can and need to work part time alongside a full time programme, can fit in my volunteering job and church that takes up 6 hours of a Sunday, and do have some limited free time which I use for hobbies. Unfortunately, they're not hobbies where I'm likely to meet men. Once I'm done with grad school that will improve. But in the meantime, if I'm going to do all this stuff in my free time married friends tell me I must do to find a partner, I would have to give up the 3 hours a week I spend on a hobby I love. Once I'm done with grad school in 4 years or so yes, but right now no, not having kids doesn't mean I have more time to meet guys. Not kids that take up my time, lots of other commitments.

I'm not convinced that someone following all the advice from coupled people on how to meet someone would have any more free time than someone with kids.
At least with kids you get some downtime in the evening to just relax and arent rushing out to some godforsaken "volunteering work" on the off-chance of meeting someone.

Exactly, storm. all my friends are in relationships and constantly tell me either to consider getting a girlfriend (my sexuality is not a switch ffs) or to swap my ballet and yoga classes for something men are more likely to go to, volunteer (which I already do, all women) "make more of an effort" (I am). Yet where did they all meet their partners? University or work I work in a shop with 16 year olds and all the guys on my course I like are in relationships. I can't win :(

I genuinely deeply regret not putting way more effort into finding someone when I was university. It sounds so awful and 1950s to say it but I really didnt realise how difficult it would be - the vast majority of my friends met their partners at uni, really about 90% of them now I start counting.

I'm only a year out of my undergrad Storm, even then it wasn't as easy as people make out. Lots of guys came to university with girlfriends from home. I joined one society notorious for people finding partners (ballroom dancing) and first got told my height (5"7) made me too 'manly' for ballroom and I would have to pretend to be a man, then got partnered up with a guy who was obsessed with me, got very nasty about trying to push me into a relationship and I had to call the whole dancing together thing off. Which was a shame because ballroom attracts short men, no other real dating potential there :( Also had a couple of guys I liked and went on dates with, turned out they had girlfriends at home. Went straight from there to a very intensive grad school programme, where there are so many nice guys and they are all in relationships. I am convinced all the nice ones are taken :(

I think that goes back to two of the points made very early on in the thread, fatrascals. The first one being we don't want advice as such, we just want to vent about how shitty it is to feel lonely. The second being it really doesn't help being told how lucky we are to not have our time being taken up by children when we desperately want them ourselves.

I can't spend all my time waiting to line up dates or waiting until I have kids, so in the meantime I keep myself busy. Will I be able to do everything I do now if I manage to have kids? Of course not. But being lonely is awful and so I try and keep myself busy. Sadly, none of it yet has led to me meeting a partner. It's shit. That's why we want to vent.

Fatrascals don't be smug.

As parents are so keen on telling childless people that they don't understand blah blah blah, maybe you should realise that you don't understand their lives.

I haven't been single for a long, long time, but even I have enough empathy to realise that when you're single and everyone else around you is in a relationship it is fucking lonely. And advice about how to meet people through hobbies etc is so patronising to some people who are working their arses off in a full time job, doing all the stuff at home and trying to keep their head above water financially.

However annoying kids can be, however much hard work and stressful - it doesn't mean that we as parents have the right to tell other people in different situations that our life is harder than theirs. Frankly I would hate to be single again at my age - late 40's. it would be soul destroying.

lisaIambe and zeezeek, fistbumps to both of you, thats exactly it.

Saving to have a good read later.

I've been single for 10 years (the odd doomed fledgling relationship aside!) and it can be hard. I am more independent (obviously!) than 90% of the coupled up women who sometimes kindly//sometimes judgmentally tell you to love yourself first (I do, but still, not every person in a relationship is totally at peace with their own self, I feel i am much further along in that journey than most but yet any thread about being single will end in you being told what's wrong with you) and that it's tragic to want a relationship.

Going out later luckily (all married women mind you) but it will be fun. I want to read this thread at 1am I'm in a gym and in a club and they're great, but I want somebody I can fall asleep with, chat to, somebody who'll care, who I can care for and sometimes when you say that stuff, you're the same as most other people and you get told off. Don't be pathetic, Love yourself, Try harder! don't try so hard. It's as though the world can't publicly acknowledge that you can want a relationship without being flawed. It's hard to find somebody and also to be one of the ones who hasn't found somebody.

Absolutely whitechief. Although im twice OP's age, telling somebody that a relationship doesnt solve anything is not useful. Im good, no demons, no issues.
But we are all hardwired to connect. Society is couple-centric and one can find oneself a bit marginalised and excluded after ten years.

Bottom line is a loving companion would be loving company.

"22 is young. "

Yes it is. Im 36, other people on the thread are also older than 22. There is no age old or young enough to not feel sad about your life situation and want people to just say "I understand". Youre making us all feel worse than we already do in an attempt to tell us "truths" we already know. You do realise that, right?

My perfect cousin

I'm just going through the thread and your comment about being a priority really hit home

OP.

Just to confirm:

I don't feel lonely lonely. I have lots of friends. Not a huge social circle, I'm not a stereotypical student I guess in that I loathe nightclubs with every bone in my body (let's face it, if I was I probably wouldn't be using mumsnet). But I have lots of good, close friendships and an active social life.

But all those friends are currently in a long term relationship, and I've never even had a proper boyfriend. That makes me feel lonely for a couple of reasons. 1) because I don't have that someone to just chill and do couple stuff with. I often end up going to things like the theatre on my own because if it's something my friends won't go for I don't have a partner to come with me. I see all my friends with a close partner just to be with spontaneously and I feel sad I don't have that. When all your friends have busy lives and long term partners they generally can't be spontaneous with you. Which I get. Doesn't help that I live with my parents who have been married for decades happily and my sibling, who is in a two year long relationship. Even here I am the single one often on my own in the evenings, if I'm home. 2) I know 22 is young, but because it's never happened for me ever beyond maybe 2 or 3 dates, I sometimes get very sad and worried that it never will. I am happy in my own company, if I want to do something and have no one to go with I can go on my own, that's totally fine. But that doesn't mean I'm sad I still don't know what it feels like to be loved.

I try. I'm genuinely interested to know why you think I'm not. At my current grad school (moving on in a few months) I am constantly around lots of guys who I get on well with. Sadly, all of those have girlfriends. Ok, so not all of them have girlfriends, but all the ones I get on with do. I don't think you'd advise anyone to jump into a relationship with someone they didn't like. Or to try and steal someone else's boyfriend. Next year I will be very isolated in my studies, which means less opportunity to mix sadly. I work part time when I'm not at grad school. In a shop, where the only males are either 16 or my married with kids boss.

I volunteer. It's a place I love, but I've never seen a male volunteer there ever.

I am a member of a sports club. The men are all married. All of them. I can't steal someone's husband.

I attend three other classes as hobbies, which sadly are all women. Hobbies I love, and don't want to swap for something I don't just because I might meet a man there. I lost 19 years of ballet time because I was told I am was too tall, I am not giving that up now. (Obviously when I have kids, but that isn't happening right now).

I would love to meet someone at church, but that hasn't happened yet either. Not for lack of effort on my part.

I do chat to people I meet out at parties etc. See a couple of pages back for how my last date went. I accept I have been very, very unlucky. I don't accept that I am expecting to fall into a relationship. Of course I expect to make some sacrifices when I meet the right person. I haven't even met anyone who might possibly be the right person yet. I am very open. I am happy to date men much older than me, I have close friends and family in relationships with guys 15 years older than they're very happy. I'm not limiting myself. Admittedly the problem there may currently be I still get mistaken for a 16 year old regularly, but there's not a lot I can do about looking young.

I know kids can be a pain sometimes, and I know they rob you of all your time. I get that. Doesn't change the fact that I desperately want them, that everyone around me is settling down to have them and unless something changes soon it might not happen for me. That's heartbreaking. So hearing that I'm lucky I have more free time than parents and I can't understand what it's like for them is quite frankly hurtful, and pretty much shoving everything I'm already thinking back in my face. It doesn't solve the problem, it emphasises it. I get that lots of people look back on their single 20s and think it was great. I don't. And my friendship circle clearly agrees, because they're all in relationships. I am happy. I'm not sat around waiting for something to happen. It just makes me very sad at the same time.