How do you accept that you’re going to be single your whole life? How do you get used to the loneliness?

[Sonervousimgonnathrowup]

So, I did start this on aibu, but it literally went wrong with the very first reply and turned into a pile on. Pretty much the only (hopefully) good advice I got, was to ask for it to be deleted and start over here.

I could really use some advice before my mental health and all around wellness suffers too much.

I was looking for some single support threads, but most of them seem to be by people who love being single and the good points are basically happy no one is watching tv shows they don’t like or stinking up the bathroom.
And or by people who already have been married and have kids, so they are not actually alone.

Anyone else out there who had to made their peace that it’s never going to be them?
Spring time is here and this has always been the hardest time of the year for me when it seems every couple seems to pop-up into the world and just have to be so happy.

So to be clear, I’m asking if anyone else had to learn to be on their own, actually alone, not with kids or have many options and can’t be bothered or MN classic that relationships are bad and lonely etc.

I’m asking how you deal with the broken heart of being single.

The OP hasn't asked how to not be single. She's asked how to cope with never meeting someone. Different fucking question and a valid one.

Yes. I found it immensely frustrating when I was single to be fed this narrative of 'you'll find someone'. If you just look around you, there are plenty of perfectly nice people who are single, although they don't want to be. And they stay that way. Now, I know Hitler was married. I know that seem really fucking awful people get into relationships. And I knew that, in theory at least, there might be someone out there who I liked, who also liked me.

But here's the thing. I had had decades of meeting men I was attracted to, only to find they were in relationships, or gay, or just plain old not interested in me. And it went on, and on, and on. Like a broken fucking record. So it was easier to accept that I would always be single, than keep trying to deal with someone holding out hope for me, and then withdrawing that hope. So when people said 'oh never say never' it added to the problem rather than helping.

And despite the fact that I am now with someone, I know I was right. I was very, very lucky to meet the right person at the right time. I might not have done, some people don't.

So I'm sorry OP, it is shit, and I hope some of what's been said here has been helpful.

I did add a 'you never know who you might click with' in my first post which was on the first page of the thread.

But the majority of other posts, and my subsequent ones, were about ways of 'coping' with it.

I suspect the OP was looking for an immediate emotional fix from the thread but that's just not going to happen. I know when I posted feeling similarly, I was looking for almost magical words or phrases that would suddenly alter my perspective akd bring me peace. But, of course, that's not going to happen.

The vast majority of responses were based on distractions or self care which, although not perfect solutions, do help you 'cope' with stuff in the short term. But then you start to feel better and more positive about yourself. You begin to find joy and peace and calm in other things. Your brain stops overthinking and overprocessing.

It's not companionship. It's not a magic cure for loneliness but it is how you stop feeling angry at your situation and angry with the world. And it does help you cope...

But the OP wasn't interested in hearing any of that.

And it is fucking shit to feel the way she does. And it isn't fair. But hearing that doesn't help you cope with it any better.

Now, I know Hitler was married

Total random side point, but I don't think they were married.

But anyway ..... He was extremely powerful and influential and a man like that is always going to get a partner. Apparently German women went into hysterical swoons Beatles style at his parades/public appearances and there was much talk of his amazing blue eyes (he had brown eyes).

But anyway ....

Apparently they married in the bunker, with Goebbels as witness. I realise he was powerful etc but let's face it, he was also flat out evil.
And that's enough Godwin's law for today.

Apparently, @WisherWood , he was a really nice bloke to spend time with. Good conversationalist, intelligent, funny, kind.

It's baffling really, but this is how abusers operate; lovely 90% of the time, then a switch to some sort of abject cruelty, then back for another 90% of nice.

Nobody is 'flat out' evil.

Do you have any money OP?

Have you looked at communal housing? Where everyone has their own house but you live as a group, with shared gardens, a community room?

Make a dramatic change basically.

You don't have to be in a relationship or have to share a house to live with others.

Worth investigation surely.

I probably shouldn’t do this, I don’t have anyone else to talk to and I remembered making this thread and well…
I got worse and on evening I just couldnmt take my loneliness anymore and attempted to end it all. Didn’t take as am here and now on top of my loneliness, I feel like I’m even more of an loser.
I’m just so tired, tired to be here, tired of being un-loved and lonely, just having to live years - decades even, all alone.
I hate it here, I don’t understand why me. Why out of all the people, I’m being punished like this.

I'm sorry you felt so sad. I'm glad you're still here though. You have value and you are worthwhile.

Hi OP

I'm pretty sure I commented on this thread earlier. I'm one of the few people who truly understands what you're searching for. Having spent hours/weeks/months/years crying with loneliness and wondering what I've done wrong. All relationships I've had have meant the world to me but absolutely nothing to them and its left me feeling genuinely worthless, like I don't belong in society.

Recently I've joined a few groups (one book related and one for outdoor activities) where I've met other single child free women. I'm not sure there will be any lasting friendships but I'm opening myself up to find these people. Some are thriving, some are desperate to 'find a man' I'm not sure how many are as soul crushingly lonely as I am but I bet some are. I'm working hard to fill my diary so I have some sort of human interaction outwith work at least once a week. Do you do anything like this? It has made a difference and meeting other single women is helping me accept that 'he' actually doesn't just suddenly appear once you stop looking and for many of us there isn't that happy ending we were promised so we have to adjust life and make it enjoyable. The bitterness has started to lift and when it gets bad I pop onto the relationships forum to catch up on how crap other people's life's are. Just for some perspective.

Hi @Sonervousimgonnathrowup sorry to hear you tried to unalive.. It is horrible to be lonely, I should know as Im 46 & I've never had a long term relationship with a man or had children despite wanting these things.

But i haven't tried dating since before Covid when I put on lots of weight & lost my confidence.
I'm now starting to lose the weight as I'm actually pre diabetic, I've joined the gym but haven't yet got the confidence to go.

I wouldn't say I feel sad about my situation- firstly as I'm on a lot of medication for a serious mental illness which does make me feel 'content' and less emotional.
Also my mum is sadly dying which is my focus in life right now.

But two things: my mum dying plus I've been recalled for a second round of tests at the breast clinic have made me think, you really only live once, I'm going to make the best out of life now.
Children aren't an option for me due to my mental illness etc but I'd still like a relationship. Preferably something casual to start with to rebuild my confidence.

I'm also making a list of things I can do without a man that will help me to get more out of life.

Are you on any anti depressants and if so do you feel they are really working?
Because you still sound quite depressed.
Being on the right dose doesn't obviously take your problems away but it can make you feel more positive about coping with them.

Op, I'm so sorry. I don't have anything helpful to say but you are not a loser. Just someone that has been dealt an unlucky hand. A hard and painful hand. Why you? I don't know and I wish your life was different.

I don't know if this is helpful but when I was in the pits I had to stop looking at the big picture. I had to stop looking at life as a whole and take it step by step. And sometimes I felt momentary joy. Usually in nature when I could forget about my life, my future and anything that wasn't just about the beauty of that moment. And in those moments I felt that life was worth living just to see something so beautiful.

I also sometimes thought that if I could do something meaningful, something that might help someone in some way then maybe life is worth living as well. I thought I'd never be happy again but maybe I could find meaning in spite of being unhappy and hopeless though I guess that meant I wasn't truly hopeless.

I need to tell you though that finally the only way I learnt to cope with my life was by taking anti depressants. Id resisted for over a decade as I thought that medication can't change my life and was therefore useless but it made me feel lighter. They didn't work very well and they didjt work for very long but when they did they made me feel a bit less broken and it made me realise that whatever my situation was maybe I was capable of happiness after all. They gave me hope.

And now I've done what I didn't want to do, which was to preach and tell you about things in my life which might be totally inconsequential to yours. So I apologise for that but I'm going to leave it just in case there is something helpful in there. If there isn't and I've just made you feel more alone and misunderstood then I really am sorry. Wishing you all the best!! Hang in there.

Im so sorry DM. I think as some of the more helpful posters suggested seeing a grief counsellor - or finding some self help books on this sort of subject might help.

I have been single majority of my adult life and I get how society isn’t really set up for single people. Also understand your point about how being single and childless as a woman of a certain age is different from the loneliness of someone who is a single parent. Just like you can’t understand their unique struggles they can’t can’t understand yours.

I don’t really have much to add but just wanted to say there is definitely purpose and hope in life as a single person but I do understand your pain and it may seem as if you’re alone but there are many in your situation.

You're stuck in a rut of thinking. I'm going to go very much off road here, because I don't think there's anything I can tell you about being happily single that you want to hear at the moment.

Book a trip to Amsterdam. Take a shedload of magic mushrooms (in a safe environment, obviously). Reset your thought patterns.

Some research, if you think that's an odd idea.

https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2022/04/422606/psilocybin-rewires-brain-people-depression#:~:text=%E2%80%9CFor%20the%20first%20time%20we,Imperial%20Centre%20for%20Psychedelic%20Research.

https://www.nicswell.co.uk/health-news/magic-mushrooms-may-help-reset-depressive-brains-study-claims

Worst comes to the worst, do some museums and galleries and you'll at least get a nice holiday out of it. Let us know how you get on if you go.

I don't know if the therapist made a mistake, it could be more that they're not there to try to get people to accept ideas that could be detrimental to them.

I think someone said you're in your 30s?
A therapist helping you to 'accept' that you'd never find someone ever for your whole life could be doing you a lot of harm in the long term.

Their job isn't to cement pessimistic views, even if they do manage to take the sting out of it and help you to 'accept' it.

I would say it would be very unethical for a therapist to do that to someone in their 30s even if they ask them to.

Good god, talk about spectacularly missing the point of the post you quoted! The pp is clearly talking about being the last one standing, single, no children, siblings gone … i will bury everyone I love before I go…reaching an age where everyone who ever loved you is gone and you say your father is ‘in this situation now’ yet go on to describe him having living siblings, a wife, children and grandchildren, so 3 generations of people around him. He’s not likely to be in the quoted op’s position is he???

But that's assuming the only life worth living is a partnered one. Which is, patently, bollocks.

Read all of A La Recerche and Joyce. See every Shakespeare play performed. Go as elitist and highbrow as you can and find the art that will answer you. It'll be out there

Walk the Fosse Way. Bag 15 Munroes. Choose a charity and volunteer for it. Become ridiculously, stupidly, embarassingly passionate about Just Stop Oil or the local cat charity or your nearest park or... Pour all that love and willpower that's In you into something worthwhile so when you wonder why you were put on this earth there's an answer.

Oh love, I am glad you are still here, even though I understand how horrible it feels to still be here, waking up day in day out to no change.

I know it sounds like self-help platitudes, but seeing as you are still here, and you are alone and you see no future in which you might not be alone, the best - really maybe the only - way to handle it is to love yourself massively and totally. Sort of love bomb yourself. Everything you do, do it with an attitude of immense affection and kindness. You'll forget a lot of the time, but when you remember, get back on track with it. What you eat, wear, physical self-care, what you read, watch, listen to. Who you choose to spend time with and how you choose to spend that time. Decide to be in control, as much as you, of making as many moments pleasant as you are physically capable of.

Almost step outside yourself as though you were looking after another person who has been neglected and is deserving of love and nurture that only you have the power to give. ask yourself; what would be the kind thing to cook for them now? What clothes can I offer them that would make them feel good? What nice scents shall I put in their bath? What flowers shall I bring them? What music will lift their spirits? What comedy shall we watch together?

DH felt like you do before we met, then he read something in an essay, which basically said what I've said - if you are alone, you must still treat yourself and have fun. So instead of sobbing alone on NYE, he bought a delicious dinner and celebrated the new year as if it would be exciting. Three weeks later we were introduced, and he was still in that lively mood. I know if I'd met him when he felt bitter and lonely and like one of life's rejects I wouldn't have been attracted to him.

I spoke to someone the other day who said she had left her husband. She followed it up by saying she didn't feel lonely because she had children and her wider family. OP is alone, there's a massive difference between being single without children and family.
It's a very difficult situation to be in. Tbh the only thing that has helped me is antidepressants. I got to the stage where going out in nature, exercise all the things I knew could help...well I literally was too down to even try them.

You don’t need to be alone to feel lonely and loneliness can debilitating whatever the reason. When you desperately want something, you always feel surrounded by people who have that thing you don’t and you aren’t owed the supposed happy ever after of a life partner and child/children.

So take the time to mourn what you don’t have but for your own well being ,you are going to have to make opportunities for yourself to meet new people. You are relatively young and in reasonable good health, which makes the possibility of expanding your social network a lot easier if the opposite were true.

Making peace with your situation doesn’t mean you are happy with the situation but it should pave the way to being open to making the best of your situation.

I have been single for so long now that I think that a relationship sounds better on paper than it would in real life.

I have been single nearly 14 years and I understand why you differentiate between someone who has had relationships and children but who is now single and your situation.
There has been some decent advice but from your latest update I think you should look to get some professional input because however well meaning we all are with advice it doesn’t replace face to face help with someone you can fully disclose everything to. Of course this won’t produce a partner or child but would maybe give you the tools to be at peace with it which is what you began your thread to try and find.
I wish you the very best 💐

Haha! Brilliant advice. 'Lonely? Do drugs with scientifically insignificant findings!'

It's a better idea than earbashing the OP until they call you arrogant and disengage again. Also, it's got to be a lot better than the substance they were thinking of taking because they can't escape their current perspective. You didn't manage to get through to them before that attempt, so stop rubbishing what other people have to say.

In simple terms poor OP was feeling suicidal
which is a major mental health problem

now has this been a life long ailment , has this developed in time - we don’t know

so people can throw advice and anecdotes left right And Center

but if she’s suicidal she needs medical attention

op sending my best
im very sorry you are suffering so much

OP I hear what you’re saying. No platitudes from me. This is about emotional pain. Please please read/listen to (audible) Bessel Van Der Kolk’s “The body keeps the score.” It’s amazing and amongst other things deals with overcoming emotional and psychological pain/trauma regardless of the cause. It is life changing.

Best wishes.

Here

The Body Keeps the Score: Mind, Brain and Body in the Transformation of Trauma https://amzn.eu/d/0gLrTT9