I'm the last single one of the family

The last of my younger brothers married the love of his life this weekend. Being the oldest makes it that much more of a potent gut punch.

It's not that I'm not happy for him - of course I am...he has a heart of gold and he finally found someone who appreciates him...but something in me broke when they read their short sweet messages to each other just before the vows, facing each other, holding hands, each of them choking up as they spoke. I fought back tears for him, but also for my own grief of what is missing in my life. The reality of my own empty existence hit me like a truck, the reality that I've managed to make it to the ripe age of 46 having never known what it's like to have someone feel that way about me. I've attended numerous weddings now, first for cousins and then for my little brothers, one by one, each one more depressing for me than the last as I become more painfully aware of my inability to find someone and never having a +1. I am now the only single never-married person in both sides of my family. I've still never even been in a long term relationship and have been primarily single throughout my life - not for lack of trying, of course. It's like everyone has moved on to another chapter of life without me. We grew up together, but it feels like we are no longer existing in the same space. They have moved on.

Romance was always a huge struggle for me - how to meet and talk to women, how to seem interesting, how to move things along, and having to be aware of body language and my many idiosyncrasies (I'm on the spectrum). And I know it shouldn't be this hard, because it comes about organically for most people. But it doesn't for me. People are quick to gaslight and offer cheap platitudes, telling me I'm better off alone, most marriages fail, yada yada yada, or variations of "she's out there" or "you need to love yourself first" or "you gotta be happy by yourself" that I've heard all my life. There's just no way to adequately convey the hopeless feeling of being an older single man with no options and little experience with women to someone who never really struggled in this area of life the way I have and is able to have a choice to be single or not.

Having my person remains a pipe dream, the one thing that continues to elude me, and I can't imagine things being any other way at this point. I tell myself I'm ok. I soldier on through another week, another month, another year...but I'm not ok. It's slowly killing me.