Desperate to find the one and settle down

Do you have any other specific big stressors happening in your life right now, and idealizing a relationship is a way to be distracted and escape to imagine you have a great partner who just makes everything better? Sometimes putting that much pressure on yourself is because you don’t trust yourself or aren’t comfortable with yourself, so it can feel hard to deal with stress, and you can hyper focus on something as an attempt to cope. Add that to just generally feeling lonely or disconnected, and you can find yourself wanting a relationship just to be in one. Or it can be about trying to find a way to feel control of your life when it feels out of control… in theory, finding a partner to settle down with gives some amount of predictability and stability. But since this is an area you can’t fully control, as there’s no way to know when you’ll meet your next long term partner, you’ll keep finding it depressing because there’s no way to meet the expectations you have that the next guy needs to be “the one.”

It’s tough to be in that mindset. But try to figure out what your fears are and what’s really bothering you. Maybe take a short break from dating and spend some time connecting to yourself and building up your self-esteem so you feel less defeated. Then when you go back to dating, approach it as meeting the person you’ll want to go on a second date with, rather than is this your future husband. And then a third date, and a fourth. One date at a time, with each one ending with a simple question: do I want to continue getting to know this person better on another date, or not? If you can shift your perspective, then there are no failed dates. There’s, “I got to know someone new, and I found out that they may be / are not right for me.” And then you go on the next date, whether it’s with the same guy or someone else. Viewing dating this way will take the pressure off, and the added bonus is that will make you seem more attractive to guys as well. And it doesn’t mean you don’t want or shouldn’t want a relationship! It just means you’ll pace yourself and get to know someone before investing and then feeling disappointed before you even really get to know a guy and know if he’s even worth getting disappointed about…

Thanks for the advice. It felt so relieving when you mentioned I am quite young so I have time. Seeing my classmates and a few college batchmates or friends of friends thing the knot is what makes me most anxious. I know I shouldn’t compare my life with anybody’s. But it is what it is. That’s how I feel. I feel like I am surrounded by a lot of crappy guys: old married men in office or s*x hungry dudes on dating apps or the ones that want relationships feel like they are doing you a favor, won’t pay, want “equality” etc. When will I find a quality guy without issues? I am quite an interesting person reading books I like and then practising them in my life, recordings songs, practicing new dance steps, going on beautiful trips, regularly posting on social media and going out with friends and mutuals for dinner, dancing, writing in my journal, and recently I also auditioned for a beauty pageant and have gotten selected. I follow my interests along with a full time job. But I still suffer hugely in relationships. Through therapy I have come across some issues like falling for love-bombing, being anxious etc. I am working on them. I take from here that probably for a while I should stay away from dating for a while and take the pressure and fear off. I am too fearful and negative about dating and guys these days. Not a good space to be in when dating. Thank you both for replying

The reason you are surrounded by the wrong people is that is what you are attracting because of where you are currently.