Am I destined to be alone for ever?

I’M 29 and I have never been in a relationship.

I wanted to be, but it never worked out. The few women I have been attracted to simply did not want to know.

I’m not bitter about it. Having experienced how angry and hateful and blinkered such infatuations make me, I have slowly taught myself to keep a healthy distance from anything that might set me off.

But I’m at war with myself. Part of me knows that there has to be something fundamentally wrong with me to explain why I’ve been alone all this time; part of me really wishes that I would meet someone and fall in love — and be loved in return.

Recently, I signed up for an expensive matchmaking service in the hope of meeting someone.

After I went through the initial interview — where the person on the other end informed me I was the classic romantic nice guy always finishing last — I found a collection of less-than-good online reviews. But I’d already paid the fee. I’m worried I’ve been tricked.

I spent most of my late teens and 20s either depressed or anorexic. I have watched so many of my friends go and make families of their own, and I just wish that the world worked in such a way that there was a point to everything I went through. But it doesn’t and there isn’t.

Am I going to spend the rest of my life alone?

JAL

MY SHOrT reply to your last question is: ‘No.’ But, of course, that confident and (I hope) reassuring negative has to be hedged with provisos. You will realise, I hope, that you have to make your own luck in life. Of course, some people seem gifted with every blessing the good fairies can bestow, yet if you ask questions you probably discover they, too, have known sadness.

Perhaps it would be a good starting point for you to reflect on the simple fact that disappointment and sadness are a part of the human condition. Which means that you are not so much a victim of fate, but sharing in the destiny of your fellow men and women, who simply have to get on with life.

At 29, you are still a young man, with a long future ahead of you. How will you use it? What will you do to ensure you create the best life you can?

I imagine you’re thinking: ‘How can this stupid woman ask me that, when I’ve never had a relationship and feel so lonely?’ My answer is this: unless you stop indulging in this terrible self-pity nothing will go right — and you will spend a fortune on dating sites. Your past problems (anorexia and depression) deserve sympathy, and I hope you have sought professional help. This might be the time for you to find a Cognitive Behavioural Therapy practitioner (bacp.co.uk/search/Therapists) near you. Is the sensible response to being rejected to become ‘angry and hateful and blinkered’? And is it then wise to cure yourself by keeping ‘a healthy distance from anything that might set me off ’? No to both.

It worries me the more you obsess about women, the less appealing you make yourself as a person. There is indeed ‘a point to everything I went through’ — and that point is to learn.

People do not respond to what they sense is neediness and self-absorption. They want to spend time with those who show an interest and display a sense of fun. Does that describe you?

If I were you, I would find some way of volunteering to help others. Crying into your own navel will make things worse, but opening your eyes, mind and heart to the wider world of others and bigger issues is the way forward.