11 upvotes, 3 direct replies (showing 3)
View submission: Tuesday Check In: How's Everybody's Mental Health?
I have been putting huge amounts of effort into finding a partner for 2+ years now, without having ever gotten into a relationship in that time period. I work on my personality, I try to read and journal every single day. I went back to finish school to pursue an engineering degree to find a better career (I graduate in May, and I have held down a job the entire time I've been in school still). I try to lift weights 3x a week and to do a full cardio session at least 1x a week. I research and spend decently on skincare, haircuts, and fashion. Yet, it never seems to be enough to be chosen by women.
And this utter defeat has turned me into a hateful cynic. I feel like I'm trapped in the bottom of a well with no way out, and as time goes on I'm actually sinking deeper and deeper in instead.
Comment by greyfox92404 at 20/02/2025 at 16:50 UTC
4 upvotes, 0 direct replies
There's a few different ways to look at this that might be helpful. I think that you are saying that we are only measuring success in your life when we find a long term partner. And the lack of success here is making you feel cynical.
But I want to open this part up a bit. Do we *have* to measure success/failure this way?
While you're in school, are we only measuring success when we find a long term career in engineering? Have you been failing that goal every semester in school? Or are we allowing ourself the space to measure success along the way. That every semester completed is another small success toward our end goal.
Like I don't think you are failing at Engineering everyday because you haven't had a job in engineering yet. But we are seeing our relationship goals this way, let's poke at why and see if we can change that.
I can tell you that I've had to realign my goals because my perceived failing was eating at me. I wasn't making any new close relationships and I had just made it through my career bottleneck when my career took a terrible turn when my whole department shut down due to COVID (i had my dream job). I was honestly feeling really shitty about myself because I wasn't making any life progress. I had to sit down with myself and reevaluate my goals to include the steps along the way and not just whether I had friends in a pass/fail system. My big goals was to form a DnD table and get people to play. And that sounds so silly but I measured success that year by if I was able to invite people to play DnD that week. Did I get the ingredients to make salsa for DnD night? Did I watch some resource videos? Did I print the character sheets I needed?
My first session didn't make me long term friends. But the small amounts of success every week did. I *did* make salsa for each and every table to make my place a more welcoming environment. I *did* print out character sheets for new players. I did invite a TON of people to play. I didn't make a new friends every week and if I measure failure that way I'd feel real shitty about it. But nearly every close friend I have today I played DnD with and I've built up several close relationships through DnD.
So I think we should instead measure our success by the active effort we put into goal, similar to how we might view school.
"This week I did my hygiene routine, I did my exercise, I did my worked on maintaining my mental health and I put myself into new places to make new connections. I put myself in the best position this week to appeal to other people as a potential long term partner, that's success this week"
It's ok that this goal is emotionally complex for us. Part of our mental health maintenance is making sure we don't pick up destructive mindsets that make these goals harder. So I'll pose a few questions to ask yourself (no pressure to answer them here).
Does the perceived failure of this goal hurt more than others? If so, why? Do we have a tendency to measure success/failure against some of our peers that look like they have had success in this area? Are there feelings of "why do they have a partner and not me"?
Comment by MonStarEvolve at 19/02/2025 at 15:25 UTC
7 upvotes, 1 direct replies
I was in a similar position when I was in the military and then once I joined the private sector and what I've come to learn from those days is that I was doing all of the same things you're doing with this mindset of "who and where's the sum of all of my efforts" and you end up hating the things you're doing because they're obviously not working.
What I would ask you to do is rather than focus on the end goal, focus on what makes you happy. Don't look to another person or partner to be your one and only source of joy and pride, find something outside of work that you can dump your creativity and expression into. As you make your own joy, doing your own things, you find people that are like-minded, who you can share with and vibe with, and potentially a partner emerges from those connections. Or maybe you're at a social, sharing your joy and you become a beacon for people to indulge more from you and from that a partner emerges.
Don't do hygiene and healthcare and good career choices for the sake of a partner, do these things for yourself, but find joy in what you want to do, and people will want to share their joy with you. Find a hobby and speak on it, be weird and love it, and people will fall in love with you for how you express yourself through the things you love.
Comment by StereoTypo at 19/02/2025 at 04:24 UTC
5 upvotes, 0 direct replies
While it sucks that your efforts haven't paid off yet, you have done a lot of good things for yourself and your future