Anyone else sometimes find being single utterly soul destroying.

[Quiddichcup]

Ive been single for nearly a decade. Add on a couple of half and half years before that too and it's nearly 13 years.

Most of the time I'm fine but I find it more and more upsetting that when I do try to put myself out there it's so awful that i can only see running back to the safety of my own isolation as the only option.

In the last two days ive been hit on by a married man in real life. Another in real life who I thought we had a date next week, mess me about so much that i cancelled and told him never to contact me again. And someone from online dating ask me out and then confess he wasn't at all over his ex wife, so I declined the date as it would be a total waste of my time.

In some way it feels self inflicted, If I had lower standards I could have gone out with any of these men, but I deserve and want more.

But wanting more has lead me to bring single for so long.

I know it's not the end of the world but any kind of relationship feels so out of reach.

@Bexter801 what because I object to “sad singletons”?

Also @Bexter801 it is “you’re”. I may not be a “great catch” but I can at least spell.

I'm single (6 years) and am 41. I totally get you OP.
I wish I had someone to watch telly with, I never finish 'box sets' as have no one to share them with. Well, except Big Bang Theory with my kids!
I'd like someone to cook for/have a drink with. Someone who gives a shit about me who isn't my Mum, kids, pal. Maybe it's about being someone's #1.
The best thing I ever did was get my wonderful dog! She's a juggling act due to work/kids but I always feel so much better after a long walk with her!
Mind you, the available men out there are so crap and, like you, I'm not going to settle.

I haven't rtft - just your first few posts @Quiddichcup

I completely understand your feelings.

It's so easy for people to say 'join a club/gym/volunteer' but like you say it's just lip service.

Then people get all cross and humphy that you're 'being difficult' as you're not embracing your independence

Fuck that.

When I was single it was dogshit. I was lonely. I have no advice, but I will say that ultimately I made it into a game of statistics. The more I tried, the more likely I was to succeed. I was in a strong enough place to receive some knockbacks because I knew ultimately I didn't want to continue being single.

Good luck. You sound awesome.

Ok I have now read every post.

What strikes me (and I really don't want to offend anyone with this, so bear with me) is that we're so bloody British about loneliness. It's like grief. We can cross the road to avoid feeling awkward. Better to not invite a single person to dinner than face the agony of an uneven table.

And to the people saying get a dog. I have 2! It really comes nowhere close to a committed spouse.

As a pp said there are just some human needs that cannot be met without another committed human.

And to the posters saying about horrid relationships or embracing volunteering, great for you but why can't we all be honest and admit that the op is feeling shit. It's not a slur on her character, and we all need to stop jollying her along with tales of 'plenty of fish in the sea' or making jam with the WI or whatever.

I work with people affected by long term conditions and the tap dance that friends and neighbours will do to avoid that conversation is insane.

I saw a lady today that has been home from hospital for 8 weeks and her next door neighbour drove past and made some bullshit excuse for not visiting. My client was lovely but one of us should have just said 'you're not that busy, you just don't like how Sheila's stroke makes you feel'. But none of us did. We all just laughed along to keep the peace.

*names etc changed obviously.

Alterego, while I agree that a dog is not a romantic relationship replacement, it does bring an enormous amount of comfort. To me anyway!
There are so many types of love (kids, friends, family, work mates, pets) and sometimes we need to be careful what we wish for!
I admire people who can happily live a single life rather than settle for something which isn't good enough.

Reading all of this with interest.

Single 3.5 years after a 15 year marriage, our childcare split is that I have four nights to myself every fortnight. Tonight is Night One.

I am extremely proactive in reaching out to friends, organising my own birthday, having people round for dinner, but the reciprocal invitations from my married friends are nil. My married friends unfortunately are always the ones to flake out on me, cancel late, or leave me hanging. A friend promised weeks ago to have me round for dinner this weekend; yesterday I texted enquiringly was Friday or Saturday better, but she this morning replied to say she is just having a quiet one this weekend and hopes I don't mind I bloody do. I had a medical emergency last year and I had to reach out for urgent overnight childcare - people stepped in when asked but having 'done their bit' returned to their families (naturally) but the alone-ness was really highlighted to me, as I took to my bed after a night in A&E while putting the kids in front of a DVD.

I've dated a bit and not found anyone special. Or special enough. Or who made me feel special. The hunt continues, with increasing apathy. All this effort!

Since being suddenly single, I invest more time in planning my time but it is often in a vacuum. I've gone to singles dinners, Meetup hikes, and hobby groups. I bring friends together and am congratulated on being a great organiser and host. I haven't been asked back to anyone else's since the end of December

Tomorrow after I sleep off tonight's wine hangover, I might go to the gym, buy the newspapers and watch Say Yes to the Dress. Or I might not. Nobody will check in with me and on Monday at work we will all ask each other how our weekend was.

I've checked the cinema listings and the weather forecast. I don't need my roots touched up. I've laundered all the sheets. If I don't fill my time, I end up feeling dismayed and let down and disappointed. I've had a monster week at work so I've had a takeaway and a bottle of wine.

Solitude doesn't really suit me, my spirits get low, and I am lucky that I have my workplace to keep me energised. But I would love to have another adult AVAILABLE to me (who isn't my mother) to good-humouredly take an active interest. I just feel ignored.

If I wasn't so determinedly set on keeping myself chipper, active and connected, it would be really easy to just slob around, defeated and bored. I am just sick of single devoted working mum 8/14 then lonely spinster the next four days.

mrsjason totally agree. I am married but I know I’d be happy alone too. But I am a very introverted person so maybe that’s why. I could happily live without seeing anyone for months (and have done so).

I see people who I know who are married and most of them aren’t happy in their relationship. Most men are selfish pigs in my experience. Why would anyone want that?

Or I look on the relationships board here - so much laziness and entitlement and cheating. It’s awful. There’s a far bigger chance of being happy single than being happy married for women, I’d say.

If I was single again, I’d just pack up the kids and move somewhere warm. Buy some cheap land and build an air bnb or something. I love my husband and I got very lucky with him but we still have our struggles.

Yes! Planning in a vacume. I'm so sorry your friend let you down. It used to happen to me all the time, it's very true that saying about not making people your priority when you are just an option to them.
It's ok for her because cancelling doesn't leave her sat on her own with no human contact, but it does you.
I'm meant to be meeting a friend tomorrow but I can't see it happening. I used to chase things up but have got sick of doing so over the years, so I'll wait and see if she contacts me- added to which I don't want to burden people and only want to see them if they want to see me, not because they feel they have to because I've pestered them about it.

Twenty- I get what you say about sick of just work and being a mum. It's always one or the other, I don't feel that i do much else, I'm either at work or with dd, some sort of sexless autobot. Someone said to me that they weren't like me, they needed to be loved . I did try to say that i needed to be too and was lonely but it falls on deaf ears, work and mum, mum and work.

I am now looking at 7 childfree days ahead of me. I have no money spare due to a wages cock up. Work is going to be crazy busy and I hope that it is so time goes quickly and I come home and crash. That feels sad that that is my best option, but that's the truth of it. I'll do some housework so it's all good for when dd comes back, tackle a big job I don't usually have time for. Absolute rubbish- I want to be going out for adult company over good food, laughing and chatting. Sitting watching a film with someone, lots of sex all over the house.

So many relatable points!! My way of coping is to be the ‘planner’, make sure my diary has things to look forward to. But people view me as the organiser and rarely do I get invites back. It’s so disheartening. As above, in a crisis friends are there, but quickly return to their lives once crisis is over... even though the after effects remain.

I’m feeling really raw after short but intense relationship ended on Thurs (not by me) and if I’m not busy I keep crying. Day times not so bad, friends invited me out tonight but it will involve alcohol and I’ll end up drunk and emotional! So think I will stay in, get the crying and sadness out of my system, then dust myself down and onwards and upwards.

Back to calendar planning now I’ve got nobody to fill my weekends for me! Trying to be upbeat about that, we’re heading into better weather which helps. I need to grow friendships with single people who are more available to do stuff with.

Twentysmackeroos so much of what you say resonates. I don’t mind my own company but too much and I get maudlin. It’s like being around other people recharges my battery. Solitude is good but just not in enforced doses. Especially at weekends!!

Quidichcup I wish I had some good suggestions for your 7 days but sadly not!! Not saying it’s right for you but I’m trying to accept being the planner and just taking it on the chin. If I waited for others I’d rarely do anything!

I'm known for being the planner too.
But it's worn thin.

It started to feel like it was a chore, people take ages to reply and it feels forced and that is not what I want at all. So I do it less and as expected nothing gets arranged or happens.

One woman cancelled on me on her doorstep. I had turned up to see her for a pre arranged get together. She had evidentially forgot. I said it was ok and to let me know when she was free. 2 years later it never happened and I haven't seen her since.
( in hindsite ive seen her go through friend ships like water and I guess I just wasn't flavour of the month any longer )

Another thing is I'm planning things for people who work less, have husbands and people to share their lives with....amd I'm doing more to make it easy for them. No one cares a jot to plan anything for me. Again it's probably a thing that's grated over time.

Ah I do totally understand. I’m planning through gritted teeth a lot of the time.. but know that for my own sanity at the mo I just have to have things on the calendar to look forward to. So plan I must! But I get you.

I have another' yard stick ' which is ' is it worth the effort

So, once I got together a team of people to go to a pub quiz. Sounds like a casual enough thing, however, do be able to do that it took 6 weeks of co ordinating people to get enough people to have a team. I had to leave work an hour early to pack a bag for dd, give her an early dinner, get her showered and in pjs. Drop her off to be baby sat. Come home and get ready myself. Went out.
Get up at 5am the next day to go get dd ( baby sitter starts work early) to bring dd back to get her ready for school/ me ready for work and out the door for 8am.
Was it worth the effort? Was it fuck.

Never happened again despite everyone saying they wanted to go again, because no one actually could be bothered to make the effort. No one else was single and none of them even had children.

I plan stuff with dd so we have things to look forward to.

I've given up planning for friends and family.

Sorry, I haven't rtft but I can absolutely relate to everything I've read on here.

I'm 28, single for 4 years, started OLD last year. I think most men my age see that I have kids and it just puts them off. I'm tempted to remove the fact I have kids just to test out my theory. I'm not completely tragic looking (albeit overweight, but not horrifically), I think I'm quite clever and have interesting conversation, my tastes are very varied so we would probably find something in common, I have a good job that I love. I've never had much male attention. I met exH on a chat room when we were 13 and were together for 10 years, so I missed that whole dating, going out dancing, meeting someone at uni, young heartbreak type thing. I'm clueless when it comes to dating.

My friends are all married with kids and the only other one who isn't has got her own crap going on lately so she's hasn't really been speaking to me much, just highlighting my isolation and the fact I have no one to talk to.

People keep telling me that it's fab being single and I just need to enjoy it. What exactly is there to enjoy? Coming home to an empty house is just awful. Sitting alone at home is awful. I would like nothing more than to go home after a long day at work and just to have someone have cooked me a meal, or ordered a takeout, or just says "sit down with a glass of wine sweetheart, I'll put the kids to bed". I do not only value myself when I'm in a relationship, that's bullshit. I just wish someone else valued me too.

Birthdays and Christmas are crap. "Oh, have you finished opening your presents?". What?? You mean the token calendar I get every year from my DMum (who I adore, by the way) and the homemade wooden door hangers from the kids (I have more of these than I have door handles). Yes, I've finished opening them. I don't have a partner who sees something in a shop that reminds him of a sweet inside joke and thinks "oh, Dozy would LOVE that, I'll buy it for her and it will make her day".

Mostly the people who tell you to enjoy being single are married 😉

If you had asked me at 28, when I was married, I would have said being single was fun. And I would have thought so, because I was single for a grand total of a whole 3 weeks between the ages of 16 - 30. And they were a fun 3 weeks.

Now I've been single for 10 years it's very different. Being a single parent adds in another dimension of difficulty.

Allegro, your comment about there bring something British about not admitting or acknowledging loneliness is spot on. I feel its the loss of community - that 50, or even 30 years ago if someone was ill, the local community would rally. Ditto if they needed help. Maybe I'm viewing the past with rose tinted glasses, i don't know. Certainly it feels like loneliness is an increasing issue.

Sorry, alterego that should be.

I'm not British and it's typical of my culture too. People will happily write about it on internet fora but if you hinted at it to people in real life - tumbleweed, silence, picking specks off lapels.

The author who wrote Eleanor Eliphont is completely fine said that Loneliness is the new Cancer. Nowadays people will come in to work and say that they need time off for their chemo. 30 years ago it was all mysterious absences.

quid I was talking to somebody on line (don't often bother these days but he messaged me and seemed nice, and he'd read my profile which is a good start). Anyway he picked up on a comment on my profile that everybody here loves travelling but I won't have that kind of freedom for a few years so I'm impressed by people who build a good life under their own two feet''. He asked about that after an easy chat, first messager who's made me smile in while. But after I explained that my kids' dad basically never has them it's not a 50:50 co-parenting arrangingment, I got a friendly polite message back to .......... sympathise. It was a goodbye from what seemed like a half decent guy but he is not going to leave the house to meet a woman with no freedom when he loves travelling. Ah well.
I have stuff to do. Better crack on. Have a lovely weekend everybody. I can hear seagulls shrieking so I think the weather is going to take a dramatic turn for the better.

I read that book last year. I could relate to a lot of it ( not the spolier though, and I'm not quite as odd) but lots was very understandable.

I'm quite a big personality and I think people have difficulty understanding how I could be lonely, especially because I am quite busy. Thing is it's only work and mum stuff, there's nothing in there for just me.

Oh yes, it's (almost) always the married ones saying how great it is being single. Despite the fact they were last single in 1995...I have one friend whose 20+ year marriage ended recently. She was one of those who would always tell me to enjoy my single life. Sadly now she's on that side of the fence she has realised that although in some ways it's good (she's lost weight, changed her appearance, as she admits she was stuck in a rut and now looks/ feels better for that) overall it's hard being on your own. Harder I think than she realised.

That's one thing I'm grateful for. ten years of being single does 'train' you for single life. I would hate to suddenly be single. That feeling can be kind of terrifying.

Yes I'm nowhere near as odd as Eleanor Oliphont either - and she found love ! fgs

Oh yes. Whenever I mention that I'm lonely I get told (by married / LTR people) that I am, in fact, not lonely.
"You've got loads of friends" (not true)
"You can just message me" (not the same)
"You've got the freedom to meet who you want" (with two children??).

Or, I get the dreaded "well, it's his loss". Yes, because while my exH is happy with the OW 4 years later, I'm the one struggling to manage two kids, full time job, studying, keeping a house on my own. But he's definitely missing out. Who wouldn't want me?? I'm a catch...

I ignore all the travellers etc because I can't ( even if I might want to) and they ask if you have travelled recently and all you have to give is a 4 night caravan break in the next county up, that you saved for a year for, and you enjoyed all the same 😊

Different world.

Just thinking our loud here but it's been good to chat. Would people be interested in another thread maybe off here? Or a fb group or something?
( I could set one up in my many free days 😂)