Dating & Romance Rant

[Crysten]

OP - I'm going to apologise in advance if any of this sounds harsh - rest assured this isn't my intention and I relate a lot to what you're experiencing.

In my experience, I used to live abroad in Japan for several years in my 20s, and I'm 32 now. While I was out there, I travelled home to visit my family one Christmas and met one of my old university friends. We hit it off extremely well after all the time since uni, had a long distance relationship and a year or so later, I made the conscious decision that I wanted to return home for her.

Sure enough, it happened, we started a relationship, but the kicker was I was stuck on the ground floor looking for new work and living with my parents. Less than three months later, I found myself single on Christmas Eve and she had already got another guy lined up. Turns out that she never really loved me as much as I did her and that stung, especially with the sacrifices I had already made.

So there I am, back home from somewhere I absolutely loved living, living with my parents, with a minimum wage job, and have been dumped on Christmas Eve in favour of a guy more attractive and successful than I am. Basically, rock bottom.

Since then, while I've always had this lingering want in the back of my mind to get another relationship, my self-confidence took a massive hit and I've never really been able to trust or go out of my way to meet anyone else since then. That said, eventually I woke up one morning, and decided to, perhaps rather selfishly, channel my energy into me instead.

I used it as a means to hit the gym, pour my energy into my work and creative outlets and slowly but surely come back out of my shell. My logic? That if I ever do meet someone, I have reason to be proud of myself and a reason that if I ever see my ex again, I can show her exactly what she missed out on.

Sure enough, I now own my own home, have a very well paid job and look better than I did back then, so all wins - the only thing I'm lacking is someone to share it with. The point I'm trying to make is as people have said though, it's all about being happy and confident with yourself before you can move on to others. If you hate everything about yourself or are wallowing in self-pity, you've already lost the battle.

At the end of the day, being in your mid 20s is not really the time to be panicking about this and giving up on this aspect of your life. You shouldn't be looking for love for the sake of it. It might even be worth looking at it from a different perspective. Relationships are normal, yes, but so is being single. Don't use the fact you are as a means of putting yourself down, as there are pros and cons to each!

Enjoy your independence and use the opportunity to reflect and better yourself - the rest will fix itself. Everyone's rooting for you, mate.