I’m 36, and while my love life has been varied and interesting, over the last few years I’ve started to want to settle down. I know it doesn’t happen overnight. But recently it’s been weighing on me more and more. I reminisce about past relationships. I feel hopeless about meeting someone in the future who shares my values.
On the one hand you hear things like “happiness comes from within”, but on the other we are social animals and 99% of us want to feel loved and to love.
Not to get on my socialist soapbox, but we’re so tired and exhausted from work that we don’t have the time or energy to make friends and other connections. The only relationships we really have are romantic ones and even then it’s basically only allowed because it makes more babies to eventually exploit.
So my advice to you is this: don’t worry so much about romance. Try and cultivate relationships online and in person. If you have friendships that will increase your happiness. Plus you will then have a pool of people who share most of your values, and one or two might emerge as romantic partners.
I’ve always been extremely extroverted for the most part, and I’ll say you’re right. I have a good 4-5 friends that I talk to every single day about all sorts of things, including my loneliness. It’s good. Guys and girls. Different perspectives.
This person gets it…
We live in social engineered culture where natural human experiences have been reduced to nothing ie it is hard to make friends or find partners because you should working as much as possible. Sometimes there is no time even take care of yourself.
It was not always this bad at least sometime between 50-80s it was not but now we are pushed into working a lot more via various methods, such as poverty, student loans or the grind propaganda. And it worked mostly. Covid made many realize how silly that is but the pressures are still there.