rokko

It seems like you have a lot of opportunity.

My memory is fuzzy, but as I recall, by the time I was 34, I had racked up a total of 2 "dates" (one of which was an absolute dud, the other didn't lead to a Relationship); one lover who turned out to be completely messed up mentally; one over-domineering girlfriend; three women I -thought- I was dating but they thought we were just friends; several crushes; three women bursting into tears and saying they weren't good enough for me and refusing to see me again when I expressed an interest in them. And yes, if you kept track through that, the implication is that I never dated the psycho lover or the dom girlfriend, just went straight into a relationships with them. (They had seemed like good ideas at the times.) My present partner, whom I've known for close to 15 years... oddly, I didn't date her before getting into a relationship with her, either: before we got involved, we just did a bunch of things together as friends, and the relationship snuck up on us. (A week later, she got laid off, so 2 months later she moved to another country for 4 years.)

Clearly, then, I am not the right person to give any dating advice. Everyone I ever took the initiative in asking out, turned me down (except that one dud date -- and it only took us seconds to instinctively dislike each other, though we were polite about it.)

Waiting for years to find someone to love and be loved... yeh, it's happened to me for sure. (And hard as it was to go through that, it wasn't 1/10th as hard as keeping a Relationship alive over the long term.)