Meeting People

I find myself unsatisfied with where I am. It is, as you may have observed, my natural inclination to whine and moan about it but do very little to actually change things. That is largely because I feel I have exhausted those means that I have available and really don't know what direction to go forward.

So I am soliciting advice: how do I expand my horizons and meet other people my age - and more specifically, of course, single female people my age? I'm pretty flexible about people I could find interesting, though I certainly have a preference for those that I can share my interests with. Left to my own devices, I've exhausted what I know - but that wasn't much to begin with.

Second, I am more publicly announcing that if anyone knows single female people they think I should get to know better, I'm not opposed to the idea of being set up with someone. It is a route I did not want to pursue, because I can be incredibly shy around people, especially girls, tht I don't know. And I used to not want to even being approaching a relationship in any sense of the word that I was not sure going in I wanted to pursue. But this approach has thus far meant that I become very emotionally attached to someone who has no idea what I feel, and in the rare instance that I do something about it, I really set myself up for crushing rejection. I had thought that God might reward my attempts, because I was trying to watch out for the hearts of people I might otherwise have to reject, but that is not a proposition that I am no longer willing to go to the grave single defending.


I'm just trying to involve others' advice in this process. I had told myself that I'd allow six months before I began looking into online dating from the incident in January. That is the last avenue I'd like to pursue, because I'd prefer the advice and assistance of people I know over that of a computer. But if I simply accept the status quo and wait for something to fall into my lap, I have no confidence that something will in fact fall into my lap.

Is it too soon since my last rejection? I don't know. I am still very hurt by it, but I don't know when, or if, that will go away. I am still hurt to a point that it affects me by such rejections from almost a decade ago, so I don't think that just sitting and waiting for those feelings to go away will do much good, but I know of no other measure to define "ready." But I know that if I allow the fact that I have been so hurt in the past prevent me from moving forward, then I set those feelings of rejection in stone. I may be "meant" to be alone. But I do not know the divine plan of God and if I am to be alone, it will not be because I did not try to change that.