All my friends are having kids and I can’t even get a guy to date me

You don’t need to panic over turning 30. You likely have several more years to start a family, possibly over a decade. There’s a lot of myths about age and motherhood in western society based on outdated research.

The problem with dating out of a place of fear and scarcity is you end up attracting men who are okay with those things because they feel the same. And for men, that fear of vulnerability translates to fear of intimacy / commitment and being emotionally unavailable, which is what you’re running into (and shouldn’t settle for). Men who want a stable relationship and to eventually start a family will be scared off by the fear you feel and you unconsciously bring to dating, whereas the men who are interested will be scared off by commitment, responsibility, and you talking about wanting a family. That’s not because there’s anything wrong with you, but it’s part of this cycle when fear throws off your dating “picker”.

That means, the best thing for you to do is focus on yourself for a bit and not on dating so you can build up your self-esteem and work through some of those fears. It will make a world of difference in who you end up connecting with. A good place to start may be looking up insecure attachment styles (a lot of people with the issues you describe have either anxious or fearful avoidant attachment styles and end up only dating avoidant men, which leads to exactly the problem you’re posting about). Step two would then be getting into how to address your attachment style to improve your relationships. Thais Gibson has good free videos for a starting point with that step.

You’ve still got time to deal with this, and it’s normal enough for people with this struggle to start questioning it in your late 20s or 30s. It isn’t hopeless by any means, but it can take some work to sort out, so hang in there!

Hi Laura,

I think you are being too hard on yourself. I understand you are not sharing the same moment with your girlfriends. Not everything is that rosy. Women are given so many expectations from society. It’s almost impossible.

I think there are men who want to have a family. Maybe they tend to be older, but they are decisive. Perhaps, it’s not the ‘younger men’ who want this . I’m in my mid-40s so this is the type I bump into. The kind who want a family, aren’t afraid to say it. Set the tone early on in your relationship otherwise it will just be casual. Stay out of that loop of just dating for dating’s sake – it gets exhausting if they were never potential. Concentrate on yourself. You have to value yourself.