Dear Roe,
I am a heterosexual male in my early 30s who has never been in a long-term relationship. As to why, I have always generally said that it just hasn’t worked out for me yet, or that I haven’t met the right person. I also feel that for a lot of my 20s I struggled quite a bit with self-esteem and self-confidence, which held me back greatly in this area. While I have become more comfortable in my own skin in the last few years, I feel I am stuck in a rut in terms of meeting people. Living in a rural area and without having the independence of my own space due to living at home are two major obstacles.
I have found that online apps are my sole option for meeting people, and while I have met people from them, nothing has ever lasted – often another problem in rural areas is that there are frequently sizeable distances involved when arranging to meet people. I would like to meet someone, as I feel not having someone to be intimate with can have a negative effect on one’s mental health and overall wellbeing, not to mention hopes of building a life with someone or having a family at some stage.
I know it can be really difficult to feel like you’re finally ready to have a committed relationship and to feel like your options or circumstances are limited. It can feel like the life you want is hovering above you but you can’t quite reach it. I fully agree with you that relationships and connection are vitally important to our emotional and mental health and, of course, if you want to have a family, meeting someone can feel even more important.
But here’s the issue: you and I both know that I can’t magically change your living arrangements or make the woman of your dreams arrive on your doorstep. If a loving relationship is what you want, you’re going to have to fight for it. You’re going to have to resist the urge to give in to complacency or cynicism or hopelessness and instead you’re going to have to choose, every day, to be brave and inconvenienced and utterly committed to building the life you want. When your circumstances prevent you from living out your ideal life, you can either change your circumstances, change your attitude, or shift your idea of what life needs to look like – at least for a while.
Let’s start with the attitude. It sounds like you’ve been working on yourself and you’re ready to meet someone, which is great. I need you to do two things. Firstly, I need you to keep making your life the best you can make it. Pursue every hobby you’ve ever wanted to try. Connect with your friends. Travel to the nearest city – or cities further afield, if you can, and meet new people, even as friends, to expand your social circle and have some new adventures.
Find a form of body movement you enjoy doing regularly. Learn something new. If you don’t already know your life purpose and passion, explore – then make moves towards it. Make your life interesting and filled with curiosity. This is both so you make the most out of this time of self-exploration and are yourself excited about your life, and so when you meet someone, you’ll be able to present them with a wonderfully rich version of you – and that you’ll be happy enough with your life that you’ll feel confident walking away from anyone who isn’t right for you.
Secondly, I need you to combat any slides into cynicism or fatalistic thinking. When you write that you’ve met people on the apps but “nothing has ever lasted” – that’s true of every person who finds themselves single after any relationship or fling. Most relationships end, most connections don’t lead to lifelong love. That’s the nature of dating. It doesn’t mean that these experiences are worthless, it doesn’t mean that your situation is hopeless and it doesn’t mean that your method of meeting people is inherently flawed. It just means that – like every other single person who is looking for a connection – you haven’t found your person yet.
So don’t throw out an entire avenue of meeting people because it hasn’t worked yet. By all means, invest in meeting people in other ways too – go to social events and singles events, ask friends to introduce you to anyone they think you might click with – but you can use the apps thoughtfully and consciously, making your profile as interesting and inviting as possible, making efforts in your conversation, and embracing the experience of meeting new people, no matter the end result.
If travelling long distances for the initial few dates is unsustainable, have a phone call or video call between in-person dates in the early days to gauge your connection so you’re being mindful of your time while still trying to forge connections.
When it comes to your circumstances and your approach to meeting people, you may have to accept some inconvenience. If you are not able to move out of your rural area for whatever reason right now, you need to decide whether to prioritise trying to move in the future and prioritising that, committing to being inconvenienced for a while, or both. If your options for meeting new people locally is limited, then you have to look further afield and commit to travelling more in order to meet people and maintain a relationship should the possibility arise – or get comfortable with the idea of a long-distance courtship or relationship where you see each other less but stay in touch via the phone, video chat, zoom and all the other ways modern technology allows us to stay in touch.
I understand that this mightn’t be the ideal image of a relationship you have in your head – but if your choice is to shift your image of what shape a relationship could take or to give up on finding love, you have to adapt. You simply must. You know that experiencing a relationship and love are vital to your self-growth and ultimately your future happiness.
This is your dream, right? Sometimes, to get something we’ve never had, we have to do things we’ve never done. So expand your search horizons, tell people you’re willing to travel, and go meet your life, instead of waiting for it to arrive on your doorstep.
When life feels stuck, you have to reach out to the world. Trust me – when you do, the world has a way of reaching back. Good luck.
[ I’m asexual but want a relationship. How do I try to date?Opens in new window ]