Death, I understand what you're saying. I too long for that deep, permanent relationship. My psychology is very much focused on having someone to take care of and control. I am conscious of a large hole in my life where my husband was, and where a slave is now supposed to be.
But as I was picking up the pieces of my life after my husband left, I admitted to myself that I couldn't simply go out and find a new partner. No one was paying any attention to me sexually. What I was doing wasn't working, so there was no point in just sitting where I was. So I decided to put my energy into addressing what I saw as the reason that I was being ignored. I decided I had to lose 40-50 lbs and get into better shape. It sucks that there is so much emphasis placed on physical appearance in the gay community, but there isn't much I can do about that. What can't be cured must be endured, I always say. Even if I couldn't control finding a new partner, weight loss and exercise were something I could control. So I started working out and gradually, guys started paying some attention to me. And I felt better about myself, and it helped my depression lift. Maybe these efforts won't get me a partner; I still have no direct control over that. But they will help me enjoy life a lot more while I'm looking.
I barely know you; all I can comment on is what you choose to present on this forum. But let me tell you what I'm seeing, in the hope that it can help you find a perspective on your problems. I see a very intelligent, articulate, and sensitive man who is so morbid that I can't imagine anyone wanting to date him. You yearn for genuine love, true romance, but your attitude is so black and so negative that I can't help but think you radiate it without realizing it. Being world-weary and nihilisitic has some value; it can help you cut through a lot of the nonsense that society spews to deny what it don't like, but the only people who find such an attitude appealing are other world-weary intellectuals. I know this because there's a part of me that's a lot like you. You think that by being this dark, you're just being honest about the world. But when women look at you, a lot of them are thinking, "This guy thinks everything is worthless. He's going to think that I'm worthless too. I don't want to feel worthless. So I'm going to look somewhere else for love."
Trust me, people would rather spend their time and romantic energy on guys who offer a sense of energy, fun, enthusiasm, and engagement with life. The reason for this is simple. People like guys who give them energy. World-weary intellectuals don't give energy; they take it. I am sure that women who get close to you will find an amazingly sensitive and thoughtful man, but very few women will make that effort because it will require them to expend a great deal of energy with no clear guarantee of a payback down the road. They would rather get to know a guy who gives off energy that they can pick up on, for the simple reason that it's much less effort. One reason I know this is that my best friend, the women who talked me down from killing myself, eventually sat me down and said to me more or less what I'm saying to you. Amusingly, she said it to me a few hours after my depression had lifted, so her timing was a few days off, but it was still a good thing for me to hear.
As I was struggling with my misery, what I kept coming back to was simply math. If I gambled all my life energy on finding true love, I would get a massive payback if I found it. But what if I gambled my life away and never found love? I would live an empty, joyless life. But if I spent a share of my life energy on other aspects of my life, such as my health, my career, my hobbies and friendships, then even if I never found my true love, the other parts of my life would at least be more full and at the end of my life I could look back and have some good memories despite the hole in my life. And eventually I realized that putting all my energy into my love life was a poor bet. A small chance at a huge payoff vs a huge chance of a moderate payoff. So I started investing a good chunk of energy into the rest of my life while still searching for love. And gradually, I started to find some meaning in the other parts of my life. And at the same time, guys started to pay attention to me. Investing in the rest of my life began paying dividends romantically, or at least sexually.
Sitting around lamenting the lack of true love is beautiful. It's sensitive. It's romantic. It's also an amazing waste of time, energy, and potential. You are so much more than your capacity to be a boyfriend and a master. You are an artist (photography), an adventurer (skydiving), a deep thinker, and so much more. Your romantic side is only one piece of you. Let these other sides of you out, and let them become as beautiful as your romantic side is. Give them some of the passion you're currently putting into making yourself depressed, and I think you'll find that eventually people will start responding to that passion. Some woman will see your photographs and think "hot damn, I want a guy who takes pictures like that!" She will see you jumping out of a plane and say "I could spend my life with a guy like that!" She will talk to you and discover what a wonderful guy you are inside and will say "I want to serve a man like that!"
How do you get to be that guy when you're so profoundly depressed? Simple. You start acting like him. You go through the motions and live his life. You commit yourself to his life. And eventually, you will start feeling like that guy. There's a saying in Alcoholics Anonymous: You can't think yourself into sober living; you live yourself into sober thinking. Change the way you are living your life, put real energy into it, and eventually you will find that you care about your life, that it has meaning and beauty in it.
If you're anything like me, you're thinking "that's bullshit. It's being dishonest about who I really am." I said that about myself for decades, and used that as a reason to not make any concessions to the rest of society. But it got me nowhere. And it was wrong. It's not being dishonest about who you are. It's about admitting to yourself that you're more than one thing. You're so much more than just your desire for love. You are your ability to take risks (skydiving), your ability to see the world in unusual ways (photography), and so on. My body is a basic part of who I am. So when I started exercising, I wasn't being dishonest about my intellect. I was admitting that my intellect didn't have a monopoly on me, that I could do something with my body. And I sat down and wrote the book I just finished, I was admitting that my career was an important part of me. If I can do this, you can too.
So put down this nonsense that the only thing that can make you whole is romance. It's not true and its's a part of the reason that you're not finding romance. I'm sorry to be blunt about this, but I honestly think you need to hear this. I don't pretend that I know you well enough to be able to understand every facet of your problems. But I can see this piece of it pretty clearly, because I've lived it. Now you can double down on your misery and tell me I'm full of it, in which case your misery will just continue barring the small chance of finding your True Love, or you can decide that what you're doing isn't working and see if what I'm saying can possibly help you a little bit. What do you have to lose?
