Miss my old life

[KTB00001]

Hi just feel like I’ve been bottling this up and need to get it off my chest.
as the title says I miss my old life. I got divorced about 6 years ago, share a child together. He has been remarried for a few years to a lovely woman. We’ve had a lot of ups and downs and bad moments but the past year or so we have got on ok for the sake of our child and dare I say it are friendly. His wife is a lovely person and so good to my son. We all live in the local countryside and share custody.
im mid 40s and apart from one terrible relationship after divorce I’ve always been single. Never met anyone else and anytime I tried online dating it was just awful and the men only wanted one thing.
i guess I feel quite lonely and lately I’ve been wishing I never got divorced and that back in the day we could of worked on things!
it’s a struggle only having yourself to fall back on and even worse regarding money and the worry of what I would do as well if I ever had bad health. I only have a small family and my parents are elderly now.
I guess I fear for the future and I just feel sad when I see all the families going around.
i can’t complain and should be grateful, I have a lovely son, a house, a job etc but this underlying feeling of loneliness and sadness always lingers.
I have a few friends, but not many and I make the effort to go to gym classes etc to try meet new people.
it feels like I’ll never meet a partner, I’ve been single for so long now I feel like I should just give up.
does anyone have any advice or feel the same way?

i guess I feel quite lonely and lately I’ve been wishing I never got divorced and that back in the day we could of worked on things!
You can't turn back the clock, KTB; your ex is happily married to someone else. So while it's understandable that you might have regrets sometimes, focusing on and encouraging those regrets in your mind is pointless; you're basically just torturing yourself. It's good that you recognise how you feel, and can express it in words, but some sort of symbolic decision/work on yourself/therapy to "officially" let go of the past might help you move on.

I wonder if trying to make more friends might be more helpful than trying to find a partner? You might even accidentally find a partner in the process, but if you don't find one, you'll have more friends, you'll be busier, get out more and have more of a sense of purpose, more to think and talk about, more people to compare notes with about how they get through life. What other things do you do/would you like to try apart from the gym?

Thank you for the reply. Yes I do need to make more friends. Just find it difficult as I can be quite shy at first till I get to know someone. I need to think of more ways to meet people in general. I have a lot of spare time in the evenings when my son isn’t here and I just miss him. I do keep myself busy but still too much thinking time and l start to think about the past and worry about the future!

I understand OP. I stayed with my ex DH for longer than I should because I loved my life. And sometimes I still miss it even 8 years after we split but we would have ended up hating each other had we continued whereas now we have a pretty amicable friendship.

Ive made a different life fur myself and having friends has been key to that. Ok money is tighter but I’ve got used to that now. I have good girl friends and manage to go on holiday, have weekends away and a good social life. It’s not the life I thought I’d have but it’s a good life.

It’s not easy up reach out to new people but maybe look at local meet up groups. If you’re on FB there’s often local chat groups who arrange nights out.

Good luck

Mid-40s you might also be in peri-menopause? That can ramp up anxiety.
I'm not great at making individual friends either and tend to do better in groups where you meet up regularly, so you don't have to keep on reaching out to people and inviting them to do things, and can blend into the group or the activity if you're not feeling as chatty. Book clubs, rambling clubs, board game meetups, parkrun, amateur singing/theatre/art, country dancing, language learning meetups, charity work, local history, anything that might interest you? Maybe try a few at a time and see what sticks.