Hi Susannah,

I can share my experience as a guy, but don’t know if it will be helpful to you or not. First, I want to say that you’ve shared some things brilliantly, such as: “To tell you the truth, often my life feels quite empty and not too meaningful since I do not have a relationship. (Yeah, I love myself and some other blah blah truths.) It is just that to me life feels most fulfilling when there is deep emotional & physical connection with someone.” Well, I happen to agree, and don’t think it’s useful when if you say you’re lonely, people respond by saying you don’t love yourself enough, etc.

Anyway, this is what I have found in women as I have dated in my mid-50s: Basically, a mixture. My work environment is not good for meeting people. When I have thrown myself into hobbies and activities, I find that single women often travel in pairs and create kind of an emotional wall, and gravitate toward the model-looking, extraverted guys. Sure, I get that that is normal, but since I don’t look like a model, and I’m on the quiet side, I’ve had to try other things. On-line dating has been working for me because I’ve gotten a lot better at screening. In particular, I examine the profiles, or end up asking the women directly, if they’ve done any serious personal growth, particularly through psychotherapy. This comes out of the experience of my last relationship in which I totally loved this woman, but her behaviors were highly avoidant and she had no interest in working on herself (and never had). As a result, I don’t even want to date a “nice” woman if she hasn’t dealt with her stuff, because eventually it would come up, and I won’t go back to a situation where I have, am, and will work on myself to be the best partner possible, but my partner isn’t doing the same. Never again. But that’s just me.

Craig