I’m 36, and while my love life has been varied and interesting, over the last few years I’ve started to want to settle down. I know it doesn’t happen overnight. But recently it’s been weighing on me more and more. I reminisce about past relationships. I feel hopeless about meeting someone in the future who shares my values.
On the one hand you hear things like “happiness comes from within”, but on the other we are social animals and 99% of us want to feel loved and to love.
Personally, when I was younger I caught myself using relationships to define my self worth and distract me from dealing with my own negative thoughts. So I started working on myself. I would sit in silence, with little to no distractions, for prolonged periods of time at least once a week (e.g. taking a long bath, or a road trip with no radio). This forced me to spend time with my own thoughts and, before long, something would bubbled to the surface (a past argument, memories of a past breakup, feelings of inadequacy, etc). Then I would take a look at that subject and / or allow myself to just feel any negative emotions. The objective was not to “solve” the issue, just to be mindful of it and understand why I was holding on to those thoughts. Eventually, I came to terms with most of my inner turmoil in one form or another. That got me to a place where I could be alone without being lonely and that, in turn, allowed me to be happy whether I was in a relationship or not.
Not sure if that is any help to you, but it worked for me.
You basically just described Vipasana meditation! Are you related to the Buddha?
This is great advice to anyone reading and relates to OP here. Only modification I would add is rather than sitting idly, I used to hit the gym and/or run around a track with sound canceling headphones and no music or audio of any form, and simply marinated in my thoughts and self-reflection, while compartmentalising the physical pain and exhaustion as a way to physically improve myself while doing the same mentally. It was a good method of meditation.
Personally, the gym is not good place to process things for me. Running works much better, especially without music.
Gym is great for self esteem though and the feeling of working on yourself. It definitely has a positive impact.