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.
The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer talks about loneliness.
Loneliness happens when you’ve:
Instead of changing the world to accommodate your thorn, to avoid feeling the thorn, you want to accept that you’re going to eventually have to face the thorn in order to get rid of it. Go through life, allow the thorn to be triggered, be aware of the sensations that arise, and then work on relaxing and releasing it as it comes up.
Once the thorn is gone, as long as you stay open and don’t allow another thorn to wedge itself in there, you will be free.
You mention you’re particularly extroverted; I wonder how much of that behaviour is based on resolving an inner loneliness. I’m also one for social situations, though I do it for a completely different reason: I love people. I just really like them. That doesn’t go away.