[thunderquip]

I just feel like I have messed up my life.

This fear of responsibility extends to relationships too. Because I am shy I tend to use online dating sites to meet women. I have short relationships that go nowhere. I break them off because I feel that my life is not ready for a serious relationship, or I begin relationships that I feel will be short.

For example, I have been seeing a woman nine years older than me. I have been seeing her for around 5 months now. She is a wonderful person and I have a lot of fun with her, but I just do not feel that it could work in the long term. There is an age gap for one, second of all, even though she is attractive, I am not sure if I am really fully attracted to her, a lot of the time I feel like I just see her because I am lonely and I have nobody else to spend my time with. The idea of having someone to do things with is great, but over time I have seen her grown very attached to me and she has strong feelings for me, which I really tried to avoid. So I have broken off the relationship because I just couldnt make the decision to commit. The attraction is not strong enough even though I like the idea of being with somebody. She is also very financially stable and I could see many positives to being with her long term, I feel this would be very selfish of me to stay with somebody for these reasons.

I have had a string of relationships like this. I am with somebody for a time and then I break it off when it gets too serious because my life is a mess and I question whether I really like the person or not. I always feel terrible afterwards. The feeling of guilt and regret consume me to such an extent. I feel terrible about hurting people and I still feel bad for breaking this off, but I just felt it wasnt right. I do that too. I feel a relationship is not right and I keep it going past the point of that realisation. I do this for many reasons, one of them not wanting to hurt the other person, but as more time goes by I guess I hurt them more. The other is that I am afraid of beiing alone.

The problem is that if I continue like this then my life will always be lonely. I will always be wandering around not knowing what the hell I am doing with my life. I will always be poor. God, I really hate what my life has become, I hate my mind. I just cant stand it...

[CosmicRose]

Well as long as your life is quote, "a mess" you will never be fully satisfied in a relationship because you're not fully satisfied with yourself. In order to have a lasting healthy relationship, you need to be in a good place first. So you need to attempt to get your life sorted out before you jump into another string of short relationships. Otherwise this theme will keep playing out (you might get lucky and find the love of your life, but how fun would that be if you still felt like the rest of your life was a mess?) so you need to make yourself your first priority and really get your life the way you want it. THEN you should start dating again. It might even give you time to really gain some introspective knowledge about yourself. No one else can make you happy but you. Stop searching outside of yourself towards another person to do that for you. Once you establish a better set of circumstances for yourself, then you will be open to allow someone into your heart. Then it has the chance to prosper.

[CrewCut]

I was going to respond but CosmicRose said it perfectly.