James Westfall: I’m going to be a nosy buttinsky here and say that you need to speak to SOMEONE about how you’re feeling now. Not all shrinks are worthless (take Dr. Helen, for example!) and what you’re talking about goes beyond loneliness.
That having been said, for people who have no idea how to meet others…yeah, I know what you mean. I relocated to a similar type of place myself. After a certain age point, in most places, people tend to be married…and while they don’t shun single people, they tend to gravitate toward other married people with the same life rhythms that they have. Which makes it difficult for new singles to form a social network that allows them to meet people. It gets awfully lonely at times – I know from experience.
My (admittedly imperfect) ways of dealing with this: Go to meetup.com and find a meetup group in your area – book group, singles group, special-interest group, whatever. Look for ones that seem to have a fair number of activities. Join a church or other religious organization (the Unitarians take atheists) and get involved in its social groups. Take cooking and wine appreciation classes – those tend to be heavily female. Look for singles events – parties, dinners, etc. – in your area. Are there other single males in your office who could go with you? Where I live, there are groups for singles with big group events in which people can just get to know one another.
Look, I tend to be poor at interacting with the opposite sex. It sucks. Ironically, the ones you find most attractive tend to be the ones you can’t put on your best face with. When all of your friends are married off, you feel alone.
All of that said, I know plenty of average-looking men who are neither adventurous nor exciting and who are engaged or married to beautiful, sweet, smart women with whom they are very happy.
I do too. Do “alpha” males get chicks? Sure. But a lot of men who don’t want to dominate the world do too, just as a lot of women who don’t look like supermodels nevertheless manage to connect up with cute, kind, smart guys.
