I (F32) have always wanted to be “chosen” and have someone really love me. Get the sweet romance, the man that adores me. Have it all figured out and be happy.
When did you accept you’re not the girl that gets the romance? The doting? The whole “love of your life” thing? Someone who and sees you for who you are?
I see others getting the big gestures, the love and affection, the engagements, weddings, families etc. All the things I’ve wanted for as long as I can remember. Should I just accept I’m not the girl that gets those things?
Comments
You’re 32…
I (32F) stopped wanting those things when I became fully happy in myself. I make myself happy, period. I just no longer need those things from another person.
To be honest I don’t think an ending can be happy if it happens when you’re 32 or 37 or 55. Most deaths that happen at such young ages are tragedies.
Honestly I stopped waiting to be chosen, to be saved, etc and starting LIVING. Then I met my current partner who I adore. 🥰 life is more than being chosen, choose yourself.
You’ll get there, if I may ask how’s your dating history? If you are looking for something long term like you have mentioned, please by all means, keep watering yourself.
I didn’t. I chose myself and kept living my life to the best that I could and I found the love of my life at 33.
I’m 43. The reality hurts
Respectfully, you don’t know what people deal with behind closed doors. Please don’t compare. I’ve had so many people tell me they wish they had the relationship I did, not knowing the bullshit I was dealing with. All they saw was the grand gestures and love bombing from my soon to be ex husband with trips, and fine jewelry and clothing…but they didn’t see him verbally and emotionally abusing me for years.
I’ve got a hopefully long life to live, and so do my friends. But if our stories ended today, my friends who haven’t been “chosen” are the ones who’d have the happy endings. Men can be so exhausting and damaging to your existence if you choose the wrong one. They haven’t had to deal with the drama I did and are thriving and happy having lives that decenter men and center building long lasting communities.
Girl I didn’t find mine until I was 36…and that was only after I quit looking for it, seriously. I decided to decenter my life from men and make my own life good, focus on building friendships. I was open to dating, but I wasn’t going to waste time on any men who made me feel bad or made mean “jokes”. That’s when I found my sweet boy. I told him we could be friends when we first met lol, he was different and the first person I never had to overthink around. Now we’re planning our wedding.
I know it doesn’t feel like it but 32 is still young.
Life isn’t a disney movie
I’m a few years older than you, and I’m still waiting to be chosen, to be loved as I love them.
I don’t have any advice or words of wisdom, but I guess I just wanted you to know that you aren’t alone in feeling that hurt and disappointment.
Even in a happy marriage there can be a lot of hardship. Maybe not with the relationship but love doesn’t stop other bad things from happening.
You are still young with a full life ahead of you! If that is what you truly desire then never settle for less. In the meantime, focus on self-love and the rest will come when you’re least expecting it ❤️Take care of yourself and truly fall in love with yourself ! Because at the end of the day we accept the love we think we deserve. You CAN and WILL be that girl !
It’s a myth, created by culture and media to sell products.
Gurl who says you have to “accept” that. Gosh that’s so depressing. I think there’s wisdom to accepting where you are NOW. But tomorrow is a new day. You’re only 32! Stop telling yourself this story that you’re not worthy of the things you want.
I will tell you the same thing I tell one of my best friends. When you are in love with yourself and doing the things you love to do alone, someone will come along to fit into your life. If you’re trying to fit your life around being lovable no one will match. You have to love you first, and then someone will add to your life.
Also 32 is so young. 30s are the babies or adult hood. Your 20s are the elderly of your teen years. If you don’t plan on dying at 60, you’re not even half way through life.
As miserable as the pandemic was, I realized I was a lot happier not chasing that. So I stopped and now I’m a lot happier.
You got time. Never seems like you do when your seeped by your age and everyone around you is around your age but just trust me, coming from an old maid.
I’m 35 and have been single by choice for years. I was with my ex pretty much all of my 20s and then a few duds after that did more damage. I guess I just got burnt out. I can’t deal with the games of dating, but I do dream of a real love one day. Still keeping myself open to it! Hoping you find your love one day too ✨
I barely survived a marriage, divorced, dated, and lost all hope. I was sad, like you for a while.
But I’m currently pushing 40, and have completely given up on finding ‘the one’. I feel so free. I have amazing friends. I have good family relationships.
I’ve found some excellent ethically non-monogamous FWB, and I am loving life. They’re good people who are open and honest, and I’m having great sex with them.
Turns out life is pretty great when you’re not being abused, lied to, cheated on, and gaslit. I no longer feel like I’m missing out on something good. My life IS the something good.
I am 33, and I am married with four kids…..and my life for the last 12 years has been miserable. Before things started becoming very obviously bad, people thought i was living the dream. Some people do have a very happy life, but not everyone who looks like they are does. I hope you get your happy ever after, but please don’t settle because you want it. I wish that i could go back and do things differently, and I feel very, very bad for saying that because I love my children more than anything.
Start living, like others have said. Being “chosen” will happen when you least expect it (cliche but I’m living it rn). I’m being loudly chosen again and again, day in and day out. I’m so lucky and enjoying it.
Being married does not mean you “have it all figured out” by any means!
I know everyone says this but it happened quick and unexpected for me.
I had felt the same.
Just don’t tell yourself its hopeless but don’t make it your life priority.
How actively are you dating? Do you ask men out? I think it’s so normal and human to want that fairy tale Disney pluck me from my tower idea, but really, men are people. Where do you meet them? What do you bring to the table? How attractive are you? How attractive do you want your partner to be? These are all helpful things to process
My aunt hastily married a man at 36 as she felt desperate. They quickly divorced due to unhappiness
In her mid 40s she met a man who doted on her and adored her but because of her previous poor marriage she was reluctant to commit. He stuck with her because absolutely loved her and in her 50s she married him. He is as adoring as he always was and still wants to raise (foster) children with her.
You legitimately have >20 years to “waste” before this marriage fairy tale began for my aunt.
Right before I met the man of my dreams. ☺️ Quit looking. Focus on you and your own happiness. Your happy ending is coming for you, you can’t rush it.
Actually just realized it a couple of weeks ago. I’m 36.
Babe, unless you’re posting this from beyond the grave (cool! Say hi to Prince for me!) it’s not too late for a happy ending.
But the only way to guarantee a happy ending is to make yourself the action star. You gotta chase happiness down like you’re a boardwalk seagull and happiness is a surprisingly speedy toddler with a bag of french fries.
There’s nothing wrong with a little wallow in self pity once in a while as a treat, but at some point getting a damn grip becomes the order of the day.
Maybe you’ll get “chosen” exactly how you want. Maybe you won’t. Maybe those things will be exactly as great and life-perfecting as you hope they’ll be. Maybe they won’t. So all the external stuff have gotta be side quests. The main quest is about you setting up your own rules for happiness that can exist within yourself and then seagulling the fuck out of them.
I’d have to ask my sister this question..
our mom literally confessed that she only had my lil sister ‘to serve as my companion’. No other reason. Literally born to be my side character slave of a sort, told right to her face. I didn’t even know about this until we were both mid 20s talking about it.
lil sis had to constantly fight for even the slightest validation, it’s sad
meanwhile I’ve lived such a full otome game of a life rather effortlessly doing whatever the hell I wanted on any whim, and even though my sister is on her way to a PhD and has a med-student fiance, it just feels like she fights too hard to get to where she is
I think my sis is admirable for having been dealt some bad cards but succeeding in the way she did. She used to resent my freedom apparently but managed to let go of it with some therapy too
she got the happy ending, imo. she just had to really fight for it and become her own strong person
never once did she wait to be saved or chosen, she knew that wasn’t going to work. She definitely had to just keep her head down and really really wiggle for a while like hatching out of a chrysalis.
I think both of us found our eventual soulmates only because we first figured out who WE were as people. I self-actualized kinda early which empowered me to communicate my needs and scare off dudes I didn’t like. Lil sis is a competitive person by nature so she was pretty active about having her needs be known, and she was also more extroverted too.
maybe you need to go back to square 1 and figure out what it is you ‘bring to the table’? I thought about myself that way + I figured out from there what kind of partner characteristics would be a good match to balance us. All relationships start as a blank slate so I really just needed to find somebody willing to work together with me on stuff. There’s lots of ‘soulmates’ using that criteria then.
I really don’t believe that people cannot have a happy ending, they just kinda get so depressed that they lose valuable opportunities instead.
I’ll make my own. My dogs. My garden. My volunteer stuff even if minor. Watching the birds and animals in the early morning, saving critters trying to cross the road…
I just try find it elsewhere. Love is everywhere. Maybe not romance, but still love.
I hope you feel better op. I would help you cross the road.
Girl, show me the fairytale wedding and I’ll show you a 50% chance of a nasty divorce within a decade.
I have no idea how women have bought the lie that a wedding is a “happy ending” or even an ending at all. It’s where the work officially begins on a shared lifetime. It’s just a party. It shouldn’t be confused with marriage, which is a whole other ball game.
Where are you geographically?
Your career?
What have you tried? (therapy? Professional matchmakers?)
I’ve never accepted that because I’m of the opinion we have all the power in the world to make our own version of a happy ending. It might not be perfect or what we thought it should be, including but not limited to having the swooping beautiful love story. I think that really just depends on your priorities in life, and there are no wrong answers in that regard as it’s your truth and your reality. But decentering men and the goal of a relationship and enjoying all the other beautiful aspects of life can make a huge difference in this sort of hopeless feeling you’re having. Another thing to consider is this: comparison is the thief of joy. You will never find your happily ever after if you are constantly looking to what those around you have and experience in public. The grass may be greener on the other side, but it’s potentially fertilized with bullshit. Conversely, the grass is greener where you water it!
All that said, you’re not alone in feeling this way and the love you deserve will find you, I’m sure of it ❤️🔥
Do you go after it? I started asking them out. That’s how I landed mine.
Everyone has felt this way at one time or another. It’s totally normal but please don’t let this be your focus or how you define yourself. There’s always hope you will meet someone amazing and the more you put yourself out there and work on being happy yourself the more likely it is that everything will work out!
A lot of people are saying “quit looking” but I actually don’t think that old refrain is true. I haven’t been looking for years and have found no one. I’m coming to terms with the fact I’ve been in hiding. And I need to get it together by loving myself if I want to date.
My life is happy. And I’m not dead, so there’s no ending just yet. Having a partner is not the mountain top for me.
As long as there is breath in my body, I believe that I can have my happy ending–at any age.
Never accept that y’all. NEVER. Life has crazy things in store for you. Plus I know you aren’t psychic OP.
I decided to stop wanting to be chosen by someone and decided to choose myself instead. I truly blossomed as a person during this era and I am the happiest I have ever been.
Sure, if someone comes along and wants to date me- I’ll consider it. But I no longer sit around pining to be chosen and redirected that energy and time to things I enjoy.
My happy ending is finding peace in my solitude, the rest can be explained through said solitude.
I probably look like I am chosen. I have the house, the marriage, the kids… it looks to an outsider like I am well-loved.
But I’m not chosen. I am settled-for.
It sucks.
It’s sad really. The women who want this are with the men that refuse to do it. And guys like me that gave everything to our relationships get cheated on and tossed aside like garbage.
Somehow I feel like universe is playing a game with all of us to see how much it can fuck with us.
I met the love of my life at 33. Don’t be so down on yourself ! Believe in your own awesomeness and keep moving through life with an open mind and open heart. Your happy ending is out there. Sometimes it’s just a timing thing.