Can giving up be liberating?

[superstarheartbreaker]

I am 36 and tbh I think im giving up on men. My past relationships have been bad and i think im much happier atm than if im stressing over some bloke. If only society was more accepting of single women. Dont get me wrong, id love to meet a great guy but i just dont attract the right type. Do should I give up or mabe keep a lazy but open mind?

You need time alone. Work through your past, present with a therapist. Learn to live in the moment. Not everybody finds a partner. Sometimes it is nit meant to be but you never know who is just around the corner.

Society doesn't accept me as a single woman?!?!

Absolutely nothing wrong with being a single women, some of the happiest friends I have are single. Two of my best friends infact. One of them has just bought her first house and is currently enjoying making it as much about her as possible, she still enjoys the odd one night stand every now and then but also enjoys slobbing out on the sofa alone watching Netflix in her pyjamas, she claims it's "living like a queen" The other was married for a good few years, she used to be a bit of a wall flower but ever since she got rid of that twat she's caught the travelling bug and is always jetting off to far away lands. Her confidence is sky high and she's basically celebate at the moment. She jokes her vagina is going through an "Ice age"

I'd say don't shut yourself up, but definitely make sure you ate happy on your own.

As someone who has been quite happily single - although with a rich and varied love life! - for coming up on 20 years I'd say go for it. Trick is to be generally sociable and open-minded rather than thinking of the landscape solely in terms of long-term relationships or (shudders) 'the one'. I also don't feel that society (whatever that is) rejects me. Do you feel under some kind of pressure to settle down?

Who cares what 'society' thinks?

I was single for eight years after my marriage ended. Best thing I ever did. Worked through a lot of emotional crap, re-trained for a career that's given me a load of possibilities, got another degree, made a load of lovely new friends... it was great! No one to answer to, no one to please (except my self and ds!)

I'm now in a happy and functional relationship, but I also know if it ended tomorrow I'd be happy and functional on my own. If I'd bounced from relationship to relationship looking for the one I don't think any of this good stuff would've happened.

I never felt rejected by society - tbh I think that's a bit of an excuse. Just live your life and who gives a fuck what anyone else thinks?

Don't worry about what anyone else thinks about your single status. I was in the same position as you some years ago - one too many unhappy relationships in a row, I unconsciously took some time out. It's that old thing if you keep doing what you've always done you'll get the same results. I had to acknowledge somewhere in me I was picking people that weren't right for me or didn't really know what I wanted, or in some cases they simply weren't very nice. I thought long and hard about what I didn't want, what I needed and also got on with enjoying life.
I met someone about 18 months later who had a huge impact on my life. I had developed better self awareness and I experienced how it feels to be in a good strong healthy relationship which will stay with me forever. Sadly he passed away a few years ago.

That period alone was a turning point regarding relationships. It made it much easier to sift out possibilities from definite no-nos rather than all the angst of trying to force something to work when it's really a non-starter.

Don't give up, just take a break from looking, do anything and everything that interests you, go wherever you want. Look inwards a little to see why you've made these choices in the past but don't obsess. Know what is acceptable to you in a relationship and what will make you walk. What I have learnt is that being with the right person is easy....