Dear White Desann:

It was a delight reading your post: so intelligent, articulate, witty, your intelligence and education shine through. And you wrote that you are “reasonably fit and not hard to look at”, and to top all  of this, you are “reasonably wealthy”?

My goodness, I don’t think you are aware of your advantages in the dating scene, online and otherwise. Reads like you are a hidden treasure that many women would be delighted to discover. I’d say that for as long as the woman you are seeing is seeing someone else as well, for as long as her dating profile is still active, that you too see other women. Meet them for coffee or tea, for a conversation, nothing hot and heavy. See online dating as opportunities to interview and be interviewed for a potential romantic relationship, in an honest, kind and respectful way.

anita

Hi White Desann,

Firstly, I want to echo what Anita and Marge have said… you’re clearly an intelligent, articulate, sensitive man with a lot going for you.  You put a lot of thought and reflection into your life and behaviour.  You sound like a really good catch.

I can hear that you are feeling very critical and judgmental of yourself.  You hold yourself to very high standards.  Coming from someone that has experienced a similar journey in life, putting that kind of intense pressure on yourself to succeed can become such a source of suffering and a real limitation to your goals, ironically.  You deserve forgiveness and self-love for all your mistakes and imperfections.  We are all beautifully flawed humans and none of us have it all together 100% of the time.  It’s important you take alleviating your self-criticism very seriously, because relieving that constant pressure will allow you to relax, to work through things at a more forgiving and gentler pace and to truly savour all the weird and wonderful moments of your journey to find true love.

I also want to reinforce some of the comments Marge made about online dating.  My perspective is a little different but after trying online dating for the first time this year, I have come to similar conclusions.  I have known friends that have found love successfully online to be sure.  But there are many pitfalls too.  With a lot of people you meet online, you are meeting them in an atmosphere of romantic expectation and pressure, and there are all kinds of unhelpful behaviour dynamics that evolve out of that, such as game playing, judgmental behaviours, and rejection to name but a few.  Whereas if you meet people organically, it is basically just a conversation, and you have a proper opportunity to test the waters and to explore the depth of your connection without all those expectations of romance sitting there in the background.  In my own experiences with online dating, the two women I briefly ended up dating had a real connection with me, but both also had abandonment issues, became clingy and introduced a lot of pressure to rush into a relationship at a pace that made me feel really uncomfortable, and in the end I felt like I didn’t even really know them on a deep enough level that could justify that kind of commitment, so I walked away.  There simply wasn’t enough time to establish a connection absent the atmosphere of expectation that online dating often creates.

None of this is to say your experience will be anything like mine, of course.  You do you – you need to find the path that is the right one for you.   But if you elect to keep pursuing online dating, do it on your terms and in a way that makes sense to you and is aligned with your goals and your own way of approaching things.  Don’t feel like you have to fit any particular mold.

I’m curious as to what your previous experiences of relationships have been and how they have helped form your desires and expectations for a new relationship?

As to your anxiety, that kind of thing is always complex and will take some more time and effort for you to unpack.  But your post reads like (as for so many of us) your anxiety is generated by wanting to seem attractive to a potential lover and to be a pleaser.  But you could flip this perspective around and ask:  what will she contribute to your life?  What happiness will she bring, and how are her personality/interests/strengths/weaknesses aligned with your own?  Don’t ever feel like you have to barter away your own standards just to not be alone.  It’s a very understandable and human pattern we all fall into at times, because we crave attachment.  But finding a way to let go of that sense of attachment is so often the way forward to finding true love, paradoxically – because a true love would be a love where we accept ourselves and another without feeling like we have to look or act a particular way.  It’s okay to be who you are – to work on your flaws / limitations and bask in your strengths.

And your problems are definitely not incredibly minor.  They are universal human problems that we all face in our lives.  And you deserve empathy, respect and compassion for whatever feelings you’re struggling with.

As Marge says, meeting people organically will be more slowly paced but it is definitely a healthier way to meet people.  Maybe get involved in some clubs or groups doing things you love and just explore social connections in the context of being yourself and doing activities that you enjoy.  Your perception of London is valid in light of your feelings but not in light of the reality of the romantic potential of living in a modern metropolis.  Your opportunities to meet attractive, available and worthy partners are vastly wider than those living in country or more regional areas, where the dating pool is much more limited.  It is just a matter of finding the right environments where you’re in your element, involved in the work or passions that make you who you are.

Wishing you the best of luck too and do let us know how it goes!

My fear is that myself is not enough – because that’s pretty much what’s been shown to me so far. Maybe that is why I wish I was not myself – wish I could see multiple people at the same time, without being bogged down by useless feelings (which, quite paradoxically, are a hindrance in finding love). I would like to be more ruthless, and I should very well able to be so considering my past – but somehow I am unable to.

Hi White Desann!

I think the others have given you really good advice, but I read something from you that I want to touch on specifically, which is the quote above.

I think it’s important to recognize that successful relationships aren’t about being “enough” and failures aren’t about being “not enough.” It’s all about matches… do the two people in this couple truly match up well in the most important ways or not?  when they don’t, they break up. You’ve been shown that “myself is not enough” so far because the ones you’ve dated haven’t been the right matches. If you aren’t the right match for them, they also aren’t the right match for you. Being more ruthless wouldn’t be the right step for you because it isn’t who you are, and being ruthless attracts a type of woman that would not match well with who you are. That’s why it’s so important to be exactly who you are because that’s the only way you’ll ever attract and date a true match. When you find that, that’s when the relationship will work much better than you’ve experienced in the past. As Marge and Anita said above, there are definitely plenty of women who would find your qualities attractive (once you regain confidence in who you are and project that), so it just takes patience and conversations with new people until you find a good match.

Dear White Desann,

Thank you for sharing with us some of your relationship history (and it’s not boring to me at all).  It is helpful to get a sense of your experiences and what you might be looking for.  I’m so sorry, though, to hear of the painful end to your first relationship.  You should be proud of yourself for the strength and resilience you demonstrated in overcoming the loss.  Not all people manage to get to that point, as you did.

I want to echo some of the beautiful words of Valora above, especially:  “You’ve been shown that “myself is not enough” so far because the ones you’ve dated haven’t been the right matches. If you aren’t the right match for them, they also aren’t the right match for you. ”  I think you’re way too hard on yourself for the way things ended in your first relationship.  It reads like you went into that with pure intentions and had to suffer an unexpected and traumatic turn of events.  Often, sadly life is just like that – through no major fault of our own.  You aren’t clairvoyant, but us humans have a terrible habit of berating ourselves with the benefit of hindsight for not “seeing” problems or being able to somewhat anticipate or change a traumatic event.  There may be more to the story but from everything you’ve described it was a pretty unforeseen outcome, and you can’t hold yourself accountable for that.  No one is perfect and we all make mistakes (it’s how we learn!).  But even though you aren’t perfect, you will be perfect for the woman that is your match, and vice versa.  The right woman for you would only see your flaws as minor frustrations or temporary setbacks – simply things for you both to work through as your love deepens.

I think what you’ve said about the assumptions we often leap to in online dating is a perfect example of why it often sets us up for failure.  It may be a better use of your time to find ways just to get out and meet people without any attachment to outcome, and while doing some kind of activity you like.  You’ll likely meet some really lovely woman when you least expect to, when it’s the furthest possible thing from your mind.

And don’t beat yourself up for feeling lonely or desiring a perfect someone to fill the void.  We all feel that when we’re single and it’s perfectly normal and part of being human.  I have been single mostly for about a year now, and have had moments of loneliness, so I totally get what you’re feeling.  We would all love that special someone to come home to, to share our day with, to go on adventures with, to have deep and meaningful chats with, etc.   It’s especially torturous when you’ve had and experienced that (which it sounds like you have), because the happiness of being with a special someone is so magical and so delicious.  So life sometimes feels strange and unsatisfying in the absence of that once we have but tasted it.

You don’t need to feel like you derive your sense of worth from anyone else.  You could use this time of being single productively, to get to a point where you can derive your sense of worth and purpose from yourself and yourself alone.  I truly feel that is the way forward for you.

What do you feel you are most looking for from a partner?  What kind of traits and qualities are you most attracted to?  It may really help you to visualise those – while you get on with the business of making your life as happy as it can be while you are on your own for now.  That way you will more readily recognise it when it comes along.

You’re a beautiful human, and you should never feel like you’re not good enough.  You are good enough.  Don’t give up hoping for a better tomorrow.

Dear White Desann,

I totally respect that you wouldn’t want to share everything on a forum.

INTJ is one of the truly lovely types!  I have known a couple of INTJs in my time – usually people of great integrity and intellectual depth.  I myself am ISFJ.

I agree with your deduction about your exes.  It says a lot about who you are, that they both wanted to remain friends with you.

Ruminating, being on edge, worrying about mistakes – all clear symptoms of anxiety, and a specific type of anxiety.  It takes one to know one.  It sounds to me like you have an unrelenting standards schema.  I’ve had schema therapy for that myself.  It’s important that you realise that no partner will remove that inner voice of criticism from you, but there’s a good chance that a therapist that you connect with / have a rapport with would.  It’s self work and not relationship work really that will be the key.  Schema therapy really helped me minimise that critical voice in my own head (that inner perfectionism – holding myself to extremely high standards), which generated a lot of inner anxiety.  The most hilarious example of this from my own life (from the benefit of hindsight – though it was a little sad) was when I was once chopping carrots while preparing dinner for my ex-partner, and I became anxious when I realised I had not cut them perfectly and feared she would reject me for being a bad cook.  It’s hilariously absurd in hindsight, but I was genuinely stressed about it!

If you can’t find a schema therapist in your area, I can suggest a book (and any related literature) that might really help you work through stuff on your own.  It has a whole chapter dedicated to unrelenting standards schemas and how they are rooted in our childhood development.  The book is called ‘Reinventing Your Life:  The Breakthrough Program to End Negative Behaviour and Feel Great Again’ by Young and Klosko.

Absolutely though, we all deserve stability and honesty from a partner.

I too spent much of my teens with my head in books and videogames.  If anything though, that experience gave you the depth and intellectual rigour that you have to this day.  What a precious gift and an asset that you can bring to any future relationship!  You are far, far deeper than a kiddy pool… and the kind of man that the right kind of intellectual woman would be so intrigued by, to the point of finding you irresistible.

You’re very welcome and I hope at least some of the above offers a valuable perspective on things in your journey.