Forlorn

I need companionship.

I’ve needed companionship for quite some time now, actually. I need someone who I know is there, whether it’s to be listened to or just hugged, knowing my company is not just wanted, but as equally needed.

I don’t need dependency nor codependency. I’m aware of myself enough to know that I’m a control freak in certain areas of my life.

I just need someone I can rely on, trust, and feel secure enough to be myself completely around.

Online companionship is nice and I do have a handful of people who I know I can trust, feel secure with and know they are just as willing to listen to me as I am to them, but…You can’t be hugged through the internet. There is no substitution for the lack of human touch. And I starve for that nearly every day.

I sometimes think I must be very unattractive or undesirable to not have someone. I see so many people who have someone, can get someone, or have so many around them, and wonder why I don’t have this ability. Why I am still alone. Why, even when I put myself out there, at the end of the day, I’m still by myself. I’m not someone’s favorite person. I’m not someone who is deeply loved. Sometimes, I wonder what I have done in my life that was so horribly wrong that I simply don’t deserve to have someone, regardless of how much I really need them.

Men say it’s easy for women to find a sex partner. Sure. It is. If we lower our standards, don’t want an actual relationship that has value and meaning, and are okay with being a person a man can copulate with and nothing more. For some women, that is certainly an option. I would never put a woman down if that is what she wants. It just isn’t what I want. It isn’t what I need. To not be loved, like, truly loved, makes me self-destructive. It makes me hateful to myself. I can’t help but see all the glaring ways I’m not worthy of love and physical affection unless I lower myself so low, that physical attention has no value or meaning to me because it is no longer about me, but being a tool. That is not a relationship of any kind for me.

Sometimes, I feel like a broken record. This post isn’t new. I wrote something fairly similar about being lonely two years ago. I’ve repeated this post last year elsewhere. Three years have passed, and all those years, I’ve found no one who actually is interested in me, knowing me, or finding me worthy of love. Many have found me worthy of a fling, a casual sexual partner, and a fulfiller of their needs. But I’ve spent a lifetime with lovers who I was just an end to their means. A way to get what they wanted without having to put any effort into fulfilling me.

I have been there over and over again, and I am tired. I’m hurt. I want to be so much more to someone other than a way to get their needs met. While I agree relationships require compromises, and I’m all for making sure both parties get what they need, I am not okay with being the only one who makes real meaningful compromises. That always seems to end up being what happens.

I could blame not having a healthy foundation in my parents to know what a good relationship looks like, and for a long time, that would be very true. Of course, now, I’m aware that my parents’ marriage was beyond dysfunctional and extremely toxic. I have made all the changes I can without actually being in a relationship and fixed what I can. I can blame those past partners for knowingly taking advantage of me, even while being greedy and self-serving. And I truly do. Each of them, at some point, had to see my growing unhappiness, my increasing sadness at not feeling loved, just needed, just being taken from, yet they chose not to make their own changes to do something else. That definitely lays with them. I know that I stated what I needed, what I wanted, and how those things needed to come from them. They didn’t rise to the call. That is on them.

But now I’m older. I either attract men who are way too young for me, hoping I’ll give them the fabled experience of an “older woman”. That is just the same thing that I am trying to stay away from. Being in a relationship that is one-sided, and not even in my favor. Those closer to my own age have set up their relationship habits, say I am being unreasonable, unapproachable, basically, yeah, unworthy of their love and affection because I won’t lower my standards to make sure my needs are fulfilled so I can feel like a full human being that has things worth loving. Because again, all they are saying is: “Be what I want and need so that maybe, I will give you what you need and want” and I already know, that’s a deal made in bad faith because they will never live up to their end of it.

I don’t know how to resolve this problem because it isn’t a problem I am in control of. I can only assess those people who present themselves to me and make my determination of whether or not they are going to treat me with love, respect and genuine care, or if they are hoping for one more person to use. I try to be very generous in my judgments, but in the end, every time, it seems that my judgments aren’t wrong. They aren’t interested in healthy, caring, and loving relationships. They are interested in their personal gains.

I hope I don’t stay single forever. It is a painful place to be to look at the world, knowing you are truly alone and no one cares what happens to you or will feel a loss or joy in your presence. It is painful to know you have to face every single one of life’s challenges completely alone. That no one truly cares enough to be vulnerable with you so that you can be with them. That there is not someone to help comfort you in those times and help you find the strength in yourself to carry on and keep trying. This is where I have been. In pain. Alone. And it gets harder each year that passes to find a reason to continue. I know another person doesn’t make me whole, but life has really no purpose if there’s no one in my life who cares whether I survive or not. If I have a success or not. And that there is no one I can return all that too who isn’t just interested in their own ends.

If that all is asking for too much, then maybe I’m better off being single till I die…