How many times can you keep starting over?

[Lexia123]

Not sure this is really a relationships topic- well it sort of is. Just wondering how many times you can keep picking yourself back up when everything goes wrong?

I'm sooooo tired of it. I'll be 32 at the end of the month, and I still have nothing to show for it. Finally this year loads of things went right, until 3 months ago when I split with BF out of the blue (posted a few threads on here).

I keep trying to move forward, make plans etc, but I feel like every time I do, it all just goes down in flames. Been feeling for a while that it would be easier to just end it all. Looking around as all my friends are in relationships and having children etc, and just wondering if this is it for me? Going away alone at xmas as I hate it (and my birthday) and want to be away from my family. Just feel there's nothing to celebrate. Scared about going away by myself but I have to do it.

Starting to become bitter and resentful and jealous and it's not a good look...

Please give me some uplifting stories as it's all a bit shit right now!

If it's any consolation - we've all (or most of us) been there. Life is cyclical and all we do know is that it constantly brings change. so if you're having a shitty time, well in time it will become better, it has too, life doesn't stand still. Now. If you can help the good times a long a little by trying very hard until it becomes habit to see the Good in every situation (as twee as it sounds) then all the better. Lights turn green? Be thankful. Lights turn red? Be thankful - gives you time to look around and notice your surroundings, architecture you've never seen, countryside etc. I guarantee once you start living this way the negative thoughts become smaller and smaller. Keep going

And anyway when a relationship ends its not necessarily gone wrong..it just means the right one isn't ready for you to make a life together yet

You do just have to keep going! But think of it this way, the likelihood is you will have a bf, kids etc, and then are you going to look back at when you were single and feel sad at years wasted focused solely on Mr right? No! Use this time to build yourself up, havegood experiences, get good friendships, interests, relax! You may never get this time again to flourish.

And you're still young! Really!

Hi Lexia,
So sorry you're having a bad time. Try reading this - the last blog post a young man wrote before he died of cancer. Scroll down and read about his last days, I think it might help put things in perspective.

www.penmachine.com/

Ok I know it's sad, but I found it uplifting too - life is precious, other stuff we can work out. xx

I know what you mean. I'm 33, nearly 34, and my relationship has just ended. I'm totally bereft and everything seems utterly pointless. I can't see any future in anything. The idea of having to even contemplate dating again is utterly hideous.

I got divorced at 31. My relationship with DP has ended. My friends are all married and having young children. I don't understand why I'm so far removed from the norm. I have a DD who is nearly 15 and I can't stop thinking about what happens when she leaves home. Then I'll have absolutely no purpose whatsoever.

I'm sorry not to be able to offer any advice but you're not alone.

I remember feeling like this at 33 when I got rid of my ex. It was the best thing I ever did, but at the time I felt useless, old and like I was doomed to be alone. So, I kick-started my social life, went to everything going, and I felt a lot, lot better. Then I realised that I was enjoying myself, and didn't need a man, I was happy!

Of course that was when I met dh :) I was 34, almost 35. He was 28! We got married when I was 37, had ds when I was 38, and now, at 40, I'm very, very happy.

It's such a cliché but you really don't know what's round the corner. All you can do is concentrate on doing the things that make you happy, not the things that you can't control, and see what happens. As my gran would say, what's for you won't go by you.

I felt like you did at the start of this year. What saved me was realising, as you do, that "becoming bitter and jealous and resentful is not a good look."

So I did what threefishys recommended, being positive and grateful and accepting, and also made a big structural change that I could make (taking a career break). And what I realised is that the thing that made the biggest difference was the attitude change, not the structural change.

Our happiness really does come from inside, not from the conditions outside. Partner+baby+house do not equal happiness. Being happy with who you are, and with the world as it is and the people in it, does.

Thank you all. Ive tried looking at the positives etc, but there's always something to drag me back down, be it people or events so to speak. I know I am lucky to have a home,job etc, but it's not enough. I deserve a little bit of what everyone else has.

I found that "looking at the positives" felt a little artificial too. What worked for me (of course YMMV) was listening to guided meditations, and talks on youtube on Buddhist psychology: the emphasis on bringing yourself back to reality, with compassion for everything you find inside yourself and in others, really helped. Because it didn't feel like sugar-coating a bad situation, but instead accepting things and seeing them as fine just as they are, the good along with the bad.

Your last post seems a little contradictory: it's all about what you have, and don't have. What you have isn't enough, what you don't have is what you "deserve"... Doesn't the fact that your home and job don't fill you with happiness give you a clue that obtaining a partner or children won't fill you with happiness either?

All of those things are outside yourself. None of them will change what's inside you. Only you can do that.