Why is it so hard to find someone to have a happy an dfullfilling relationship with?

[poshsinglemum]

And to keep that relationship happy and sustainable?

When |I was a little girl I just thought that I would meet a man and marry him. Preferably a handsome prince!

Noone told me about abusive relationships, the dreaded dating game, sexual competition and rivalry, love triangles and being dumped.

I am so fed up with it all.

I'd love to meet someone new but I feel quite cynical and disillusioned.

Give me a kick up the arse please and Merry Christmas!

I'm not serious about the handsome prince btw! Surely a genuine decent bloke can't be that rare?

I think the good ones are already taken! I'm fairly certain there are some good ones out there (and, of course, we all want different things) but it's so hard to find them.

I would say, though, that perhaps something really wonderful takes a bit longer to find than something mediocre? Don't give up!

I think if your aim is 'happy ever after' you're bound to fail, but if your aim is something more concrete like finding someone with shared interests or a shared commitment to some sort of charity, etc., so the two of you have something to talk about or do together when the shine wears off, you could find yourself pretty happy as a byproduct of achieving some other aim. No individual other person is going to make another 'happy'.

I've been with guys with shared interests. They still turned out to be knobs.

I am not expecting a relationship to make me happy. Most of my significant relationships have made me bloody miserable!

poshsinglemum - if you don't mind me asking, how old are you? Do you have an 'acceptable' age range for your potential partner, and if so, what is it? And, would you be willing/able to take on step children?

After splitting with my ex I spent 2.5 years single. I didn't even so much as go on one date. This allowed me the time to recover from a bad relationship and give me the opportunity to learn how to make myself happy without being reliant on someone else to do it for me.

When I met my dp I was in a really good place in my life and it has helped establish a good foundation for our relationship. We are getting married in July and I feel like I've found a good man to share my life with because I was willing to work on myself first and know I don't 'need' to be in a relationship.

I'm not saying that the same applies to you but it's what worked for me.

Posh please tell me that not expecting a relationship to make you happy is because you're aware that you make your own happiness etc and not because you have such low expectations of being in a relationship?

I firmly believe that you pretty much get what you expect so I hope you do have expectations of being treated with respect and that the man should be trying to make you happy etc.

I think there are three golden rules in relationships:

Judge a man by what he does, not what he says. It's easy to say "I love you" but if his actions don't reflect it, it's worthless.

A partner should enhance your life, not make it unhappy or miserable.

And, in the early stages, if he wants you he will phone you; email you; text you; etc. If he doesn't contact you, he doesn't want you.

I went through a series of wasters, tossers losers and every other type of c*nt you can think of. Until I as 35. I didn't go looking for them but they found me and I guess I didn't bin them off quickly enough.

I do not have the answer...

I spent three years as a single parent after divorcing my xh. I also used to feel lonely sometimes and wondered why I didn't seem to meet 'nice' guys.

Well, I did meet 'nice' guys, but we just didn't click. I realised that I wasn't clear in my own mind about what I wanted, so I wrote it all down- what was necessary to me, what was important to me, what was desirable, and what I could compromise on. It surprised me, actually. You could try this.

The other thing was -stay true to yourself. (Awful cliche I know). I loved clubbing and would go quite often. My mother would sniff and say I wouldn't meet any 'nice' men out clubbing, but I figured that I was a nice woman, so by the law of averages, there surely must be nice men in clubs. And after all, I only wanted one!!

Well that's exactly what happened. I met my now DH on a (very) drunken night out. He is everything I always wanted. But if I hadn't had the other, crappy dates I perhaps wouldn't have realised that.

The last thing is- value yourself, because if you don't, it is certain that no-one else will. (And I say this only because I didn't value myself. You may not have that problem)

Good luck. They are out there. I promise.

It depends what you want. It's not unreaasonable to only want a relationship with a man who is kind, fair, decent and sexually attractive to you. It is unreasonable to want a man who is gorgeous, loaded, famous and a genius who also does 65% of the housework and buys you presents every day.
It's also unreasonable to expect a couple-relationship to be the most important thing in your life and fix everything that you're unhappy about. yes, there are nice men in the world, lots of them. But you are responsible for your own happiness and wellbeing.

If there's a pattern of ending up with losers, maybe you're somehow attracted to the wrong kind of guy? Do you deep down believe you can 'save' a man, or do you think some sort of spine tingling excitement should be part of a relationship? Sometimes the instant click is there because you have found someone who is very good at mirroring, but who lacks substance, and is not made of the kind of material necessary for the long haul. It might be worth examining what the losers so far have had in common as far as the initial attraction was concerned.