I don't know what to do & I have given up
Over the course of my adult life I have been single. Most of my dating life are generally one or two dates between myself and a lady which for whatever reason just was not a match. I have had three "relationships" which in reality were more like extended dating that lasted upwards of three months. so about once a decade, I get slight bit of progress until it stops. This past one happened last year and i feel that it completely shattered me. I felt it had the most amount of potential that I had ever had and it fell apart.
For whatever reason, since I hit 40, almost 4 years ago, it was like a plug was pulled and everything stopped for me. The dating apps just stopped, I have yet to get one match in the past year. Since I turned 40, I think it's been maybe 3 total. The only thing I can tell that changed was the number in my age. Which makes this previous failure hurt more. It has been over a year now and I have not had a single date nor have met anyone. I feel like I am in a downward spiral because my attempts to put myself out there have yet to yield any result.
I have a steady good job, I live in Austin, I have hobbies and interests. My friend group has dwindled down to only a select few and they are all married. However I consider that to be the natural way of getting older. I don't drink, so bars are not my scene. I am fairly introverted so I am not a person who just engages with strangers. As far as I can tell, it's over for me. It was always difficult for me to date dispite my friends complimenting me on who I am as a friend and person. I don't know what im asking advice on because outside of fundimentally changing myself in ways I don't believe I can, I believe I have done all the standard advice. I've been told "just be your cool self and don't worry about looking and you will be surrounded by cool people" and while sort of true, after joining a few different communities of interests I have, becoming fairly active and well known, the only thing that happened was that I met/know some cool people. Since I left those communities, no one stuck around, I just don't hear anything from them anymore. I stopped making the effort and they never reached out.
After my break up, I put effort into dressing nice and going out to karaoke, one of my interests, atleast weekly if not twice a week, along with trying to hardest to interact with strangers, but that got me no where.
I know it's stubborn and I'm probably wrong but I don't know what to do anymore. My job is not conducive to meeting people, all my friends have their own lives and family (plus they don't go out) and the only thing left that I have been told is that I need to find something new to do since the other interests didn't work out. And this is where I get stubborn. I don't want to do that. I found no dates when I was in the burn community, and same goes with the karaoke crowd. and now I have to figure out a new thing when I was pretty good at the pervious two? what about that makes sense. why would that work when the other two didn't. I personally saw it work for others while I was in those communities. I have seen people meet and get married and I am just getting older.
I can't lean on the things I was good at, I don't have any single-going-out friends anymore, and apps have had zero positive results. I welcome advice however, after 25 years of going through it, I have probably heard it before, tried it previously and can tell you that it did not work out for me.
so in conclusion/TL:DR, I have given up. I have left out a lot of various things because this is already a long post but I am of the opinion that if all I have left to do is work and get by, by myself, I have done it already. I don't want to do that anymore.
thanks for reading I guess
Posted Jul 29, 2026, 6:41 AM UTC