How Can Therapy Help With Chronic Singlehood?

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It seems that when someone laments their chronic singlehood, an offen-recommended course of action is to see a therapist, but the question that always enters my mind when witnessing this exchange is How does a therapist help someone who's been single all their life get a partner? Where is this in their job description? It just doesn't really make sense to me for someone to go to a therapist with the sole goal of getting a relationship, but if a lack of a relationship is the main or only source of their grief, and they can't make peace with the prospect of never having a relationship, then that's effectively what they would be aiming for by visiting a therapist.

In saying that, I can think of a couple of ways that a therapist could potentially help a patient get a relationship. One would be to recommend an avenue that the patient hasn't previously tried yet, that ends up resulting in the patient getting a relationship, and the other would be to work on issues and barriers that might stand in the way of the patient getting a relationship.

If not for either of these, I can't see how therapy has the potential to help someone whose primary problem is chronic singlehood. Am I missing something?

I think it really depends on the person. If, for instance, the main issue for the person is confidence then going to therapy and support groups can potentially help with that. If it's more the sheer severity of the spectrum condition and/or any comorbid conditions then psychology isn't likely to be much help. I've personally found therapy to not be very effective in my case for instance because my miswired brain has serious problems even properly feeling anything and that before getting into the all the reversed reactions such as finding many things people like to be irritating.

It doesn’t.

Because that someone is usually depressed about their singlehood.

I could not get a date for a really long time and understandably that made me depressed. I tried therapy for a while, but it did not help with either depression or dates. When my love life improved, unsurprisingly depression went away.

Being in always bad mood and lingering in negativity is a huge red flag with NO on it for any healthy potential partner.

And if we're takling about the same person, there is a lot to work on outside the romantic relationships topic.

I think a better way of phrasing this is to say that it is EXHAUSTING to be on the other end of someone like this. My first GF was like this and I frequently collapsed on the floor from talking to her on the phone because she was very draining. I personally never want(ed) to be a burden on anyone and by going to therapy I could at least minimize (it's definitely still there) my somewhat bitter and jaded attitude towards life.

To be perfectly honest in my single days if my therapist were to tell me that I was a catch and if it wasn't for the bounds of a professional relationship they would have been interested in someone like me that would have been all I needed to hear.

The OP is talking about himself, most likely.

I used to have a boyfriend like that, too, but at that time I most certainly wasn't healthy.
Neither was he.
That relationship was doomed from the very beginning and it couldn't end well.

That may be my bias: when it comes to romantic relationships, I can't think of first few dates only, I always consider a perspective of spending life together.

Matchmaking

Couples therapy

The counselor might give good advice on friendships but the proximity of dating makes it such that the counselor could not offer instructions in real time

And this is exactly what I would expect. So it would appear to me that recommending therapy when all you know about the other person's situation is that they're depressed about not having a partner, may not be conducive to any positive results.

I'm talking about the phenomenon of being told to seek out a therapist when you mention that you're depressed about being forever single. I'm not really zeroing in on any one person.

What I'm getting at is that there are probably certain situations where therapy can help with removing obstacles to get a girlfriend, like if you have social anxiety or something like that, but I don't see it as being applicable to every person who's depressed about not having a partner, and yet it seems if you say you're depressed about not having a partner without giving any further information, a bunch of people will recommend therapy.

magz wrote:

Being in always bad mood and lingering in negativity is a huge red flag with NO on it for any healthy potential partner.

And if we're takling about the same person, there is a lot to work on outside the romantic relationships topic.

That example would probably fall under what I said about therapy removing barriers in order to get a partner. If someone is negative about everything, then there could well be more going on than just dating dissatisfaction.

But what I'm interested in here is an example of the opposite extreme; someone who is depressed about not being able to get a partner, but who is otherwise well-adjusted and not in need of therapy being told to seek therapy because they're depressed that they can't find a partner. What could a therapist do for that individual?

And If the answer is nothing, it seems pretty stupid to me to recommend therapy to people who are depressed about their lack of relationship when that's all you know about their situation, and yet this seems to happen pretty often.

Prolonged situational depression can become clinical depression.

Therapy can help with clinical depression as an alternative to anti depressants or as an accompaniment to them.

Everything changes, always, the relationship may ease the symptoms, but that is imo more pressure than a potential partner or relationship is able for or is fair to expect.
What happens if the relationship ends? Constructive coping mechanisms learned through therapy supports the person, whereas the person without these supports is back to where they were before the relationship started but with the additional challenges of heartbreak.

But assuming the depression progresses to clinical depression, if the root cause of the depression is situational, that root cause isn't going to go away if you treat the depression clinically.

I can't speak for others, but if my situation changed and love and dating was no longer a problem for me, I can almost guarantee that I wouldn't be dealing with depression anymore. Even if I was, it would be significantly less severe. It would appear to me that if you can't treat the root cause, you effectively can't treat the depression.

I would assume that if you had someone who was clinically depressed, and not able to function well because of it, who in turn lost their job and their partner effectively because of their depression, treating the depression as though it's situational probably wouldn't solve a whole lot either.

Amity wrote:

Everything changes, always, the relationship may ease the symptoms, but that is imo more pressure than a potential partner or relationship is able for or is fair to expect.

It's not like I or others are choosing to feel the way we feel though. If we could, we would have started getting into relationships earlier on and this wouldn't be an issue.

It's not like I want a potential partner to feel pressured, but I sure as hell don't want to be alone forever either. Unfortunately, I can't see a third option. Obviously I wouldn't be trying to make my hypothetical partner feel pressured, but I can't control how they feel, or how I feel.

Amity wrote:

What happens if the relationship ends? Constructive coping mechanisms learned through therapy supports the person, whereas the person without these supports is back to where they were before the relationship started but with the additional challenges of heartbreak.

I really don't know what would happen if the hypothetical relationship ended. It'd probably be pretty hard on me, but at least by getting a relationship, I would be able to feel like I'd have a chance at getting another one. Being single would be a lot easier to cope with if I'd had a normal dating life up until now, and I'd imagine that it will take having experienced a more normal dating history before my overall emotional experience with love and dating is comparable to that of the majority.

At the moment, a girlfriend seems like an unattainable goal, because I've never been able to get one before despite my efforts. Before I'd ever had a first date, a first date felt much the same way, but since I've had one first date a few years ago, it has gone from feeling unattainable to merely unlikely, which is at least progress.

The long and short of it is, I think for me to no longer have these insecurities about love and dating, I'd either need to be involved in a good quality long term relationship, or have been involved in at least a couple in the past (more than one so I know it wasn't a fluke). The first break-up is going to hurt no matter when it happens, so if it's going to happen, I'd rather it be sooner than later so I can move on from it.

I'm not having a depressive episode atm, but Christmas can be difficult and I sense after rereading this post that this is influencing my perception.... It is what it is.

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Sometimes the root cause is not as significant as what the untreated depression has grown into.
In successful therapy how you deal with the root cause changes. That's within a persons power to change, not necessarily the situation itself which may never change, or may change many times.

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I know you're/ye are not choosing it, much like all things autism related, it is unfortunately the cards you get dealt. I have my own hand to deal with too, so I dont say that flippantly.

What is in your control is how you perceive and react to these challenges. Therapy can help with that too.
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Who knows how you or anyone would feel post break up, one possibility is that depression would manipulate your perception and you could view your situation as hopeless, regardless of any evidence to the contrary. The way life was before the relationship (with the situational/ untreated clinical depression) might seem like an insurmountable reality to return to.
Or you may just view it to be unlikely instead of unattainable, who knows how a person will perceive and react!

I never met such a person.
I met people who were sad or frustrated over their singlehood but if they were "otherwise well-adjusted", it never developed into depression.
I don't say such people don't exist but I don't know any.

in the context of people who have issues with being chronically single, and who also have other issues, it seems that people often attribute the other issues as being the reason that these people remain chronically single, but I would say that pretty often, they have the issues with romance first, and the other issues follow.

Can I not get a relationship because I have a low self-esteem? Or did not being able to get a relationship cause me to have a low self-esteem? Often, people will suggest the former, but most of the time I think
It's actually the latter that is more applicable, though after developing the low self-esteem, that low self-esteem can further drive people away