Feeling totally desperate and alone, still single and time feels like it is up

[lizzedays]

I'm 33 in a few weeks and I feel like giving up.

All of my twenties I had relationships. Lived with two of them - both moved abroad! One ended up being married and I didn't find out for months and was heavily invested which was shit. The most recent I'm pretty sure was abusive...he would tell me what to wear on the beach, belittle me, go into moods where he wouldn't speak for days and say that he wasn't sure if he loved me, only to try and make it up a day later. It was shit. Very recently an old friend said he had feelings while he was engaged to someone else - I thought I felt the same but said he needed to speak to his other half before we even met up...cue him no longer speaking to me.

So here I am at 33, watching everyone else live their lives while mine passes me by.

I have led such an independent life in my twenties - lived alone for the last few years, got a house, etc etc. I have had all sorts of hobbies, been on dates and given it a proper go, not written people off too soon etc etc all the things you're supposed to do.

I'm just totally fed up. Everyone in my life has someone and nearly all have families. I'm sick of dealing with house problems alone, sick of being the one who is still looking for someone,

Self pity is so unattractive, I know, but I am so sad. My sibling is younger than me and will be married and starting a family soon. It seems to be so simple for everyone else...and I don't mean that everything in their lives are simple, just that they have someone and that has worked out for them.

I don't see a bright future. I just see a lonely one and I don't know how many more months, let alone years, I can take of this. It's not that i hate my life, it's that I am done with living it alone. I've had enough. I want a family and people around me and things to celebrate and to plan with someone. Nothing else in life will fill this void. I am so sad.

thank you everyone for your advice and details of your experiences. it is so nice to read and gain some perspective.

i have recently felt so panicked that i would have just wanted to be with someone i knew as a friend, even if it wasnt right. i just panicked a lot. i still feel that way but this perspective helps.

Read the secret by Rhonda Byrne, I was you, I swear it changed my life! I'm now happy, married and everything is pretty much perfect. My life was a car crash before!!!

You don't need to hear the cliches everyone always trots out on these threads. Sometimes you just need to vent, have a wallow for a while.

Hear hear!

Sometimes we have an existential 'am I loved?' moment in our lives, which is very painful. That's all. Less of the 'you'll meet mr special when you're not looking' shit. Or the 'men can smell desperation' shaming shit either. Please!

Sometimes we need people to climb into our pit with us when we're in a mess. So I hear you op, it's shit and it's very painful and desperate sometimes.

I panicked at your age and got pregnant by a fairly disastrous Mr Wrong, so hold your nerve! We split up quickly and I've been single in the nine years since then. Tbh, once I had a child, I was a lot less worried about singledom, but others won't necessarily feel the same way.

bibliomania - strangely i feel that if i had a child i wouldnt be anywhere near as panicked. in fact i think i would enjoy taking my time to meet the right person and right relationship. i want a family so much even if the baby was first and the man after! not that i am assuming being a single parent/ co parenting from afar would be a walk in the park because i dont think it would be.

It works for me. I do feel a bit guilty about dd though, as she's wistful about having a more conventional family.

I was like you but at 39 and out of sheer desperation to have a family I ended up hurtling into marriage/kids with the most unsuitable partner on the planet that I'm still trying to extricate myself from.

Wouldn't change having had DC but I'm saying tread carefully.

Atleast youve had relationships! im 29 and have never lived with a man. Im approaching 30 soon and im single with 4 kids. Its definitely over for me.

Being a single mum is preferable to suffering a twunt of a "partner*.

33 was an awful age for me I was so unhappy.
I'd wanted children in forever and it was around that age that I decided to go it alone.
Best thing I ever did got a beautiful 2yo daughter now and I'm 39 end of this month .

I was never going to meet the right guy as I was too focused on children, that was by far the most important thing to me.

You need to decide what's important to you.
You can have a relationship at any time but it's only a short window for kids, and definitely better to have them alone than with the wrong one.

It's hard, I remember feeling how you felt after coming out of a long term relationship at 28. My friends were all getting married and I just felt it would never happen so I worked hard to think that if Mr Right never appeared or I might not have children then there were lots of doors still open to me. I actually started to feel ok with feeling that and tried to take up new opportunities when they arose. A few months later I met my DH, we've been together 9 years and have just had DD2. I know it's easy for me to spout all this when I do have what you want but try to make peace with yourself about your situation and hopefully it will happen when you least expect it.

I met my husband at 39 and had never really had a long term relationship before. He is wonderful and we have an amazing relationship. Don't give up, you never know what life will bring your way. Be open to situations but not desperate, and as others have said, trust your intuition.

Met my husband at 34, married a year later - I think by this age we know better (them and us) and it doesn't have to take several years of getting to know them. I'm glad I didn't settle down til my mid-thirties - had so much time for my youth - partying, holidays, saving money so that when I did have my first baby at 36, I was really ready.

I am a 30 and have one a DC . I may be younger than you but I feel the exact same thing. And it doesn't help that in my culture being a single at 30 upward means there is something wrong with you and you are even hopeless if you have a child already. I have accepted my fate but it's nice to hear about others to whom it has happened later on .

Don't give up OP

@Butterflykissess I don't understand your post. You say "At least you've had relationships" which suggests you haven't. But you've got four children. How do you get to have had four children without having had a relationship or living with someone? One child I could potentially grasp but four?

In your shoes, I'd throw myself into on line dating. And I mean, proper working at it, not being half arsed. When I became single at 38, this is what I did. I already had my children, so there was no rush really, but I just didn't fancy being single. I was on the internet every single night! Met my now DH on POF, and we celebrate 10 years together soon. You have to put the hours in, in my opinion.

Way to go Shatner. If she got four children out of no relationships that's her business I'd say

@springydaff It makes no sense because she has other threads on which she clearly talks about an ex - whether it's all the same ex or more than one, I don't know - but an ex clearly indicates she's had at least one relationship so to tell the OP "at least you've had relationships" implying she herself hasn't isn't true. Mind you, sometimes she has four children and sometimes she has two, so that's probably why I don't understand it either.

33 is so very young! I have been married twice and they were awf. Almost two years ago I found the perfect man who I am now engaged to and I’m 43. I think 43 is still quite young!!!!!! Don’t give up! Like others have said people are only just beginning to look at settling down at 33 and some people only begin having children in their 40s!

Hi your only 33, that’s so young.
Even if you were 63 you could start again with someone new.
First thing I would say is not all of those other relationships are as fabulous as you think, some will be plotting to leave o/h s, some will just be tolerating their relationships as yet are terrified to go it alone. Some will actually envy you your freedom.
Have you got children ?

OP I could have written this a few months ago! I had been single for years, all my friends were married and starting to get pregnant, I had been on hundreds of dates and nothing had worked out. I felt very very lonely, panicky and had a bit of a break down about it.

Something in my head clicked then and I realised I wasn’t doing anything wrong - it just hadn’t happened for me, simply down to bad luck. So I thought, I can continue to get upset and panic about this and spend the rest of my life unhappy, OR I can accept that the life I had planned for myself was not going to happen and it was time to make a plan B.

I thought long and hard about how I could be happy without a serious relationship and did the following: researched adoption and ivf for single people - made me realise I could have kids on my own and it wouldn’t be the end of the world, researched where I could afford to buy a 3 bed property on my own (there was no way I could do it in my current area but had always assumed I would meet someone and buy with them so hadn’t bothered looking anywhere else) - made me realise I could do so near some family members and some friends I had forgotten lived out that way, Disucssed it with my parents to see if they would be willing to support me in all this and thankfully they were (if a bit upset - my mum thought I was “giving up” but soon came round once I explained just how low I’d been feeling by trying to chase marriage).

All of the above made me feel in control of my destiny again, where I’d been feeling at a loss before as everything hinged on whether or not I met the right person, and what they were like. I truly accepted that marriage wouldn’t happen for me in my 30s/ pre-kids and I just hoped to meet a nice divorcé in my 40s/50s instead!

Of course, a week or two after I’d had the conversation with my parents and decided on a new direction for my life, Mr Right (hopefully!) turned up! He was someone I’d known for a while and had zero romantic interest in. Really zero! But something happened which meant I got to see him in a new light and now I both fancy the pants off him and love him deeply. I was very surprised by this and still am! We’ve now been together 6 months and are quite serious.

So my advice would be to cry it out for now, then genuinely accept and come to terms with the fact it might never happen the way you hoped it would, then work out how to be happy without a man. That way, you should either genuinely be happy on your own, or like me, someone might turn up when you’re not expecting it!

Sorry that was so long! Just really recognised my past self in your post and wanted to offer help if I could!

None of your business Shatner. Also poor form to ferret around someones posting history and discuss anomalies on an unrelated thread. Many of us disguise and change our details so as not to be identified IRL.

Thank you so much for all these experiences shared and advice given, it has helped me more than you know! It is so nice to hear of ways to deal with this and to keep up the hope that one day it will have all been worth it. I've just felt so lonely recently...my best friend getting married and it all seems like i'm left behind! thank you all so much

Great post Conker.