How can I accept turning 30 and still being single?

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I want this thread locked now. I am honestly sick of my detractors tailing after me despite how they claim to hate my threads and myself personally.

Honesty I think the "if you don't love yourself nobody else can" is a code for "shut up, we don't care about your whining".

While I agree somewhat with the general sentiment of the quote, I can't (or should I say couldn't) stand when people would say this. Spending a lifetime internalizing the irrational hatred and dislike others had for me just makes me a sane, rational human who is not a psychopath. Having said that, dating and believing in someone who has low self-esteem usually means they will go out of their way to prove your wrong.

I do understand it, don’t get me wrong. I do, and I’ve felt that way before. It’s a terrible place to be. It’s one of those things that’s hard to communicate to someone who has difficulties just getting past a lot of the fear, especially looking down the bottomless pit of depression and other social impairments. I don’t have it as bad as Marknis. But I tended to obsess over it and tried every chance I got to stay on top of it.

I realize that you only see it the way I do with experience, but the experience part SUCKS. And I stand by every word I said about that. Loss is BRUTAL. I can’t honestly say I’d PREFER to be alone. But I CAN say that the experience leading up to my final LTR was awful. I CAN say that marriage/family life is HARD. And if loneliness is killing you, you’ll find LTR and marriage if you go that far is murder. Not everyone is cut out for that, so I say be careful what you wish for.

But the self-loathing bit I AM all too familiar with. It’s been such a big part of my life I didn’t see it for what it was until recent years. And I guess I’m not really past it. It’s just I began to look at other things in life as more important. It’s not a way of saying “stop whining.” But if you do look past hating yourself and wallowing in misery, the “stop whining” bit is a natural consequence.

Reversing that can stop the cycle, too. If you stop whining and look more positively at your life in general, you’ll tend to be upbeat about yourself and start to see better results. But that’s not the primary message I’m trying to send with that.

Here we go again...

In before the lock. Boo, you got your counter ready?

People are giving you sound advice about the things you can do to make yourself more attractive to a potential partner. Diet, exercise, treating/overcoming your depression, loving yourself etc - all good things. Why would you want the thread locked when it's just starting to become valuable?

Last edited by goldfish21 on 03 Apr 2018, 12:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.

You don't have detractors. You have people taking time out of their day to try to help you and give you valuable advice.

You're literally telling people to F off when they're trying to be nice to you and help you. If this is any indication of how you respond to women being nice to you, I'd guess you've driven away interested women without even realizing it.

You just answered your own question. It IS valuable. But he has lost control of it. We’ve made it into a positive platform of honest and practical discussion. We are trying to help solve a problem and all the answers are there. He wants a tool for continued self-loathing. He wants enablement. He wants validation. He actually does get validation from us, but the challenge to take that forward and become better than he is is just too much. That would be woooooork. And it’s haaaaaaarrrddddd. And that’s when you have “detractors” like me who ultimately “prove” him right.

What’s haaaaaaaarrrdddd for me is trying to stay nice about it. There’s just something about other human beings that I feel sorry for that keeps me coming back...sometimes only after banging my head against the wall and a few deep breathing exercises, but I’m not giving up yet.

Mmhmm. I already knew the answers to my own questions; I just wanted to Marknis to think about them. Also, I don't like giving up on challenges, on difficult people.

I don't know everything. I'm not the best at everything. But I do know some things & am pretty good at some things. I've recently thought how fun & interesting it'd be to help Marknis & sly279 (especially sly) if either would actually be receptive to positive change and then follow up by doing the work. In less time than the number of years they've been here complaining about things they're not happy with about themselves, their health, their life, they could whip themselves into physical & mental fitness via diet, exercise, learning, growing, changing etc. I'm not claiming to be any sort of world's leading expert on health/fitness/nutrition etc but I know I've managed to do these things for myself and how big of a difference it's made in my own life since I was very comparable to either of these two 6 years ago and it'd be a fun "life coaching," project to advise them what to do with their time (exercise, sleep etc) and what to eat to back it up for maximum impact. It'd be fun to see anyone make these sorts of positive changes in their lives, but more fun to see such extreme causes turn their lives around. Sly279 in particular, as he continues to be transparent about the state of his mental health declining while his digestive issues amplify, and it's been my personal experience that dealing with the physical digestive issues via diet/supplements gets the nervous system firing oh-so-much better, and I truly believe that if he were to ingest things that heal him he'd feel better for it in a mere matter of months.

However, none of this is even hypothetically possible if neither of them are willing to do anything different than what they're doing now in order to get the bodies, brains, and lives they want. I do wish both of them would have that moment where they decide "This is My Life & I'm going to start LIVING it!" and from that moment on.. just imagine the compound effect of positive advice, action, results, congratulations, further advice & support.. and bit by bit they regain control of themselves and their lives, eventually feeling balanced & whole, happy, annnnd in turn they'd begin to be perceived as attractive to others, make friends, maybe get a date, meet someone they're compatible with etc. These two have copious amounts of good advice from many different people here, but until either is willing to do any work on themselves whatsoever they can't truly be helped and I believe they're simply here to vent and seek sympathy like it's some sort of quick dopamine fix.

You and I seem to be on the same page, especially wrt physical activity and diet. I’ve picked up a few unfortunate pounds and had an awful run about an hour ago. Only made it 40 minutes. I was shooting for two hours. Half marathon is on Saturday. Ugh. Blister on toe, chafing in other areas even after taking precautions, plus muscle/joint strain from yesterday trying to build up my pace. The good news is I hit a pretty high peak two weeks ago, which tells me if I take it easy the next few days I might even set a new best time.

All that to say everyone is subject to highs and lows and self-improvement is an ongoing thing. Probably any advice in that area will be taken better coming from you than me.

I’ll throw this out there re diet and digestion. I don’t personally use it, but I hear that Plexus works wonders for some people. You have to know someone to get it because it’s a MLM
business model. But the few people I know that are into it swear by it. Just something to think about.

I went to the beach and hiked the 480 stairs, but that's about it. I do need to start running more and drop 5-10lbs before the Tough Mudder in Whistler in June. It'll be my 5th one in 6 years. Besides a toke and the top of the stairs, I did reach a high yesterday.. after consuming 4 1.2g South African Transkei chocolates. It was definitely a good time and very mentally clarifying - a nice "ctrl+alt+del," to refocus on my bigger picture goals and what I know I need to do to get my fitness, finances, and life in better order so I can do all the things I want to do.

Just looked up Plexus to see what it is. Sounds healthy enough, but way overpriced. It's basically probiotics, some prebiotics, and a few digestive enzymes.. but for $150usd. These are all healthy things, and while I don't know the cost of these enzymes, the pricetag seems pretty high to me. Similar probiotics cost less than half that in stores and somehow I doubt the bit of added enzymes are $100 in value worth. Chances are good that they are healthy, though, and people buy them because they're convenient and they're supporting a friend's MLM etc but w/e I'd just as soon continue buying probiotics from my local grocery store for WAY less money.

I can give advice about self improvement. I'm all about it. Hell, the tattoo on my left arm translates to "Good Change," but it won't be well received by anyone who's not interested in doing one bit of work they need to in order to get what they want.

No, I don't. Women almost never make the first move in the culture I live in. I've never had a women "jump my bones" or say something like "You're cute! Let's go on a date!" or anything like that. Instead, they either have a "Don't come near me" aura about them, especially if they are looking into their cellphones.

People are like mirrors.. if you don't like the reactions they have towards you, reflecting back the vibe you're putting out, then recognize that you have to change yourself. You cannot change women, or anyone else. The only person you have 100% control over changing is yourself. I'd bet $ that it's taken a long time for you to get out of shape, depressed, and to feel unattractive and thus it's expected that it'll take a long time of focused, disciplined, effort to improve yourself. Only you can do it. You've just got to decide to, start working on yourself, and not give up. Day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year you'll become better than you were before. Or just continue doing as you've always done and getting as you've always got. Every time you change nothing you decide that you still want exactly what you have. It's YOUR choice.

And they'll likely continue giving you that look until you get your life together and stop trying to assign blame to everyone else except yourself for your problems. Do you honestly think everyone else is to blame for you not getting a relationship or not getting your life together? Don't you think you have any ownership at all in the struggles you're having now?

Here's the thing, though. I have been told I am attractive but mostly by people who were coupled up and old ladies. Even an ex-friend told me I was attractive but I still needed to "clean up". However, it was ok for her to say "All guys suck!" whenever she had a break up.

Actions speak louder than words man. It's no use being called attractive by people who are unable or unwilling to be with you. It would mean a lot more from someone willing to give you a chance, wouldn't it?

When people say you're attractive but they're not willing to step up to the plate and date you, I'd take it with a grain of salt. Especially if real-life scenarios frequently play out where you find that women seem disinterested.