I wish I could offer you some really clear-cut advice, but sadly I don't think I can.

You probably know this already, but people are often motivated by unconscious or barely conscious needs and desires. This is what makes relationships so tricky.

I know a woman who realized during psychotherapy that she was biased against men with beards because of her unhappy relationship with her father who had a beard. For this reason, she prioritized men unconsciously based on facial hair. She didn't even realize this until therapy. And if she didn't realize it, how could the men she rejected know that they were rejected for apparently no good reason.

Maybe this is irrelevant, but in the animal world, a lioness although being mated to a single lion will tend to keep other males around. The theory is that this has to do with increasing the odds of reproductive success in a case where the primary male's life ends for whatever reason.

The female lioness, moved by instinct selects who she thinks will assure her the best chance for reproductive success but also hedges her bets by knowing where other male lions might be.

Whether that is true or not or whether it can be generalized in any way to human beings is up for debate. And open to question.

But people seem to have some notion of what an ideal mate would be. It isn't that they arrived at this through cool and calm rational study. There are forces at work beyond rationality. Past experiences, strong fears, conflicting ideas or emotions, compulsions and so on. If true, that would seem to explain a lot.

If one watches people in the produce section of a grocery store, one sees that people have different personal tastes. They tend to pick the produce they like. And it is not like they have tasted every type of produce and reasoned it all out. People like what they like. And they prioritize. If the store is out of something they want, they might select something as second-best. The important thing to realize, I think, is that this has nothing to do with the inherent value of the produce.

If produce had reflexive consciousness, they might develop self-esteem issues if they saw that people de-prioritized them. And that would be wrong in my opinion. I never even considered buying a Chinese apple pear until I was 45 years old and tasted one at a party. Now they are one of my favorite apples.

What all of this is meant to say is that I don't think it is fair to place your self-esteem in jeopardy by what is happening in your personal life. If people were totally rational creations maybe putting one's self-esteem as risk would make sense, but people are not totally rational. People are moved by many things on the edge of their consciousness or deep within it.

We all tend to enclose our relationship options within fairly small boundaries. In a small town, for example, a person generally selects people from that town or near it. There are exceptions of course. There are surprise meetings between people. The internet has expanded the number of people we might meet, but it is sort of one-dimensional. People cannot share on the internet what their subconscious needs and desires are because they themselves don't really know them unless they have done some pretty deep reflection or undergone psychotherapy.

I suspect that everyone over 40 years old has had experience with being de-prioritized by others whom they value with very high priority. I know I have.

I'm not sure that approaching this relationship issue head-on is going to have a favorable outcome. Not sure that your being direct is going to cause those who have de-prioritized you to re-evaluate that and change their priorities. Sometimes the direct approach works. Sometimes it leads to less than favorable or unfavorable outcomes. I'm not telling you anything that you don't already know.

I myself have tried it and although sometimes it led to temporary improvement in a relationship, I have never experienced it as leading to a lasting improvement. But things are not always logical. I remember a funny line from a movie where the woman says: "I hate that guy so much I'm going to end up marrying him." That sounds absurd but sometimes the absurd happens.

I am mostly worried about your self-esteem and your losing hope. There are strategies for increasing one's odds of finding a soul mate. There are many books on this subject. One of these books suggests that increasing one's acquaintances increases the odds of making more friends and increasing the number of one's friend's increases the odds of finding a romantic relationship. I don't know what to make of things like this.

You know already that publicity increases visibility. People in the public eye, like movie stars and popular musicians get lots of love letters. Even people in prison who have had their picture in the newspaper sometimes get love letters.

I hope that you will not lose hope. There are always surprises in life and not just bad ones. Please try to not let your present misfortunes affect your self-esteem.

In closing I have to admit that my fallible opinions are just fallible opinions. I share what has helped me through things but have no idea if they are helpful or would be helpful to others.

I hope your luck changes. And I am rooting for you.