How do you resign yourself to life completely on your own?

[LaPerduta]

I would have loved to get married and have a family. Neither of those things is ever going to happen; in fact I suspect I'm always going to be single.

Has anyone managed to genuinely feel okay about completely failing to achieve these fundamental things? And if so, how?

I have good days and bad days but am feeling particularly down about it today.

I'm good with it now, being single is factory settings for me.
There is so much societal pressure to meet somebody and be half of a couple when you're young but as you get older I think you see the benefits of not being stifled or restrained by a very average man. If I were with somebody, he'd be very average 😃

It"s better if you have a decent income of course.

completely failing to achieve these fundamental things?

Please stop thinking like this. Being married and having a family is a choice, not a "fundamental". You make it sound as if everyone who doesn't have these has failed at life.

As a start, I would suggest questioning whether the marriage+kids combo is fundamental. It is not. It's one way of living, among miriads of others.
I get what you are saying of course. Much in the same position myself. But the more I look around, the more I see that people of all ages arrange their lives in about a million different ways. Single - long-term partner - pre/post divorce, one foot in a dead relationship - has kids - no kids for any reason - married with 2.3 children and the white picket fence in suburbia - the list goes on.
What do you WANT to do? Ask yourself that. If you had nothing standing in your way, what would you want to do, when you wake up tomorrow?
Focus on that.
And if your ideas about "fundamental" ways of life have been formed by novels like Anne of Green Gables, I suggest focusing on the multitude of unmarried, active women in them. There have always been women for whom being married was neither a preference, nor a fundamental prerequisite, for happiness and fulfilment.

The societal expectation (and so the one that's bred in to us) that to marry and to procreate are not just 'normal' but the only way to be truly happy, have a lot to answer for.

I'm not diminishing your completely understandable concerns, but I think these expectations are built up in us, drummed in to us, through family, advertising, film and TV, pop songs etc etc that it makes it feel like failure not to have achieved them.

When in fact singledom suits some people more than being coupled. And you can be perfectly happy single, and / or childless.

It's nigh on impossible to extract how much of your feelings are all you, and how much is concern at feeling you aren't fulfilling social expectations.

I don't mean to be irritating or to make this an academix debate, but I think this adds to the pressure you put on yourself, and the feelings of failure.

Do you honestly KNOW it won't happen? Could you have a child on your own? Do you have good friends? A rewarding job? Intreresting hobbies? A full, rounded life doesn't have to have a husband and children in it.

Ps, I don't see it as a failure. I see it as a credit to my strength that I'm not with a lazy unattractive man
Women almost always do more (labour), make more compromises, give up more opportunities, acquiesce more.....

Not everybody withers in a relationship, but I seem to. So that helps me know that this is for the best for me.

It's a choice if you have it. I haven't chosen not to have those things.

I don't mean to suggest everyone who doesn't have these things is a failure, but I have failed to achieve them.

Btw I briefly dated a man who was dead set on the idea of having 2 kids. Only the IDEA, mind. He could never have coped with the practical, day-to-day tasks, sacrifices, annoyances, of having small kids (or bigger ones for that matter).
His reasoning: "everybody I know with kids say this is the best thing in their lives and they would never regret having children."
😐
I ran for the hills of course when he started with the pressure and the future faking.

It's not going to turn out you're like thirty-something and depressed, is it?

I think it's fine to be single some people are made for it, what I'm reading from you is that you are not happy with being single and would like to settle down.

So what are you doing about it?

Join a dating app?

Go out socialising, and if you currently only have coupled up friends get a job in a bar a couple of nights a week, it doesn't matter if you don't need the money it's putting yourself in social situations.

Start a college course, you may well find someone of mutual interest.

It is fine to be single, it's not fine to be single if it's making you unhappy or unfulfilled.

I am out of a three year relationship last year, I have had my child, my career and and heading towards retirement and find being single lonely at times, I do keep busy, I have great friends but I'd love to find a loving relationship but I won't settle

I would also rather be single that in a bad relationship.

It's a possibility. Having a PhD is also a possibility. I don't have one, neither do most people I know. Have they failed at achieving it? No they haven't.
Have I? Maybe, it used to be my goal. I never achieved it, and thank heavens for that! The career I have now is so much more fulfilling, so much better suited to my personality.

When you fixate on ONE way of living, you limit yourself and stand a good chance of sabotaging your own chance for being happy in other ways of life. Don't do that.

"everybody I know with kids say this is the best thing in their lives and they would never regret having children" 😂 Of course they do, you can't exactly shove children back where they came from!

@LaPerduta, why have you always wanted marriage and a family? What, specifically, do you expect to gain from them?

Can you achieve those benefits some other way?

How much have you always wanted them? What's stopped you going to a matchmaker, for instance?

I'm completely on my own in ways you probably didn't mean - divorced, childfree, ill, isolated - and am quite proud of my 'resigned' approach. I'll tell you more if you want, but suspect this isn't what you're asking.

Having affairs as and when is one perspective.
Not that I advocate that, but if your single and not too fussed about the package of family etc.

I would love a kind, funny, smart and sweet boyfriend to share my life with

Most men who have shown interest have been pretty much none of those things though. If I’d gone down any of those routes permanently I can’t imagine my life being better than it is today - but can imagine it being way worse (god, so much worse!). I take my singledom as a vast improvement on a shit relationship, and allow myself the hope a good one is possible.

I was in a loving relationship for three years, he helped me through cancer, thought he was my soulmate. I couldn't have felt more fulfilled or happier.

Then he started binge drinking, falling over, breaking things in the home by falling over paralytic, getting a nasty mouth on him. I left, he wants me back but I'd rather be a "failed" single person that a "success" in a relationship like that.

Fundamental was perhaps the wrong word. I just meant something ordinary, commonplace and unambitious, as opposed to unrealistically aspirational.

I wish. Well, perhaps depressed but certainly not thirty-something.

Why do you think it can never happen for you?

If you're of a certain age, yes, biological children may no longer be possible - but what's to stop you meeting someone?

Plenty of people meet someone new in middle age, even in old age.

I would read that thread about men not even packing their own bag when they go away and expecting their wife to do it and be glad.

It's hard if you wanted something and it doesn't happen, that's true.

I'm guessing you didn't want to compromise and have a child any way you could, with anyone you could find. This i have to say is a good thing.

Somehow you have to reshift your perspective. I wonder if spending time with married couples with children would potentially help... tbh I think most marriages up close look desperately unappealing!

Think about what you have done instead. And if the answer feels as if it's nothing, there's time to change that.

I can recommend the autobiographical writings of Diana Athill. She didn't have a marriage or children but her life was so interesting. The book Somewhere Towards the End summarises quite a lot of her perspective.

What age are you
Why do you think you will always be on your own
Did something happen to make you feel like this?

Sometimes desperation to find someone, anyone, can make potential partners run a mile. Not saying that's you, but you sound despondent and desperate. Why is that?

I don't mean to be rude/cranky, but do you really think I've never thought of trying OLD? I've tried probably ten different sites and been on dozens of dates.

Fwiw I've also done umpteen college courses.

I'm late 40s. I've been single for nearly 20 years. Longest relationship two years. It's an appalling track record which I'm ashamed of.

I don't think I come across as desperate, but perhaps I do.

Why ashamed? How is it shameful?

I know I won't have a child (too old) and as near as it's possible to know that I won't find a relationship, based on the adage that the best predictor of future outcomes is past experience (or something along those lines).

I don't know if you've ever read the Narnia books; perhaps you know who Aslan is?

At times when I have had no idea what the future might hold, I have thought of the advice of Puddleglum the Marsh-wiggle in The Silver Chair - to go on and accept the adventure that Aslan sends.

You never know what's round the corner, until it appears.