@MichaelJ,
Quote:it's a crisis about finding meaning in life..
MichaelJ, you don't find meaning in life, you have to give meaning to life.
Yes, your existence is ephemeral, and, if you are really fully aware of your own mortality, that is all the impetus you should need to make that existence as full as possible before the curtain comes down. If your own existence, and the quality of that existence, does not matter to you, then it certainly does not matter to anyone else. You will pass from this earth and become dust whether or not you choose to live well or wisely and, if you choose not to live wisely or well, you will have simply squandered those precious few days of existence available to you. That's all the choice that you, and everyone else, has in life--whether or not to make the best of it.
Does that make life an absurd joke? Not at all. It simply puts our grandiosity as humans into its proper perspective. We are animals, just a little more evolved than the others, and less bound to our biological natures and instincts than the others, and more conscious of our mortality than the others, but we're really no more important than the others, we just like to think we are because, as humans, we are rather ego-centric.
But, because we have rather uniquely human characteristics, and abilities, and our behaviors are largely learned, and shaped by our cultural milieu, our patterns of acting and interacting with each other cannot readily be understood by looking at the mating rituals of baboons, or other animals, unless, of course your goal is to date a female baboon.
Our adult relationships are interactions between rather complex personalities, and those individual personalities significantly override whatever biological imperatives are tied to our specific genders, which is why it is erroneous to engage in any simplistic stereotyping of either gender's characteristics--such thinking will simply be wrong a good deal of the time.
You are trying to understand "women" as though the answers could be found in a manual of some sort, or through some sort of pseudo-scientific approach, and you are definitely barking up the wrong tree. Nothing, except considerably more experience in relationships with women than you have thus far had, is going to help you chose better partners who are more compatible with what you want and need in a relationship, and nothing except considerably more experience is going to help you be more attuned to what your partner needs and wants from you. And so far, in the two significant relationships you have had and told us about, both your first extremely long-term "engagement", and your more recent brief "friends with benefits" arrangement, you were so out of tune with these women, and what they really wanted, that they both wound up blind sighting you when they left you for someone else. Instead of ranting about how awful women are, you'd be much better off trying to figure out why you couldn't read their signals more accurately, or why you were choosing to ignore the messages they were sending you. Being blind sighted, not just once but twice, tells you nothing about women in general, but it should tell you something about yourself and your lack of perceptiveness regarding your partners. Relationships are never static, they always take work to be maintained, and there is never a guarantee of happily ever after. But, if you're not attuned to your partner, you're increasing the odds the relationship won't work out, or you're bound to keep picking the wrong partners for your particular needs.
If you want to learn more about women, and yourself in relationship to women, you've just got to get out there and meet more women, and date more women, and throw any expectations, and preconceived ideas, you have about women out the window. They are all unique, MichaelJ, they really are, just like snowflakes, and you've got to learn how to understand, and appreciate, and relate to, their individual uniqueness, instead of looking for a one size fits all formula for a relationship that's unlikely to get you what you really want out of a relationship. The only way to compensate for your lack of experience is to get more experience. Join a dating site if you have to, that's a good way to meet lots of women, and a good way to gain more experience about the initial steps in getting to know someone new so you know whether you want to invest more time in a particular relationship.
But, all of this has been mentioned in this thread, many times, by a number of posters, and none of it has sunk in. You may be right that you will never find what you are looking for, mainly because you're not willing to put much time and effort into the search.
You have trouble committing yourself to a goal, whether it's trying to find a good partner, or trying to decide where to focus your life and interests, so mostly life continues to pass you by and you wind up feeling more hopeless. And, if you don't get off your butt and start moving, and making things happen for yourself, nothing will change for you. And that too has been said to you by numerous posters in this thread. You just keep spinning your wheels, and wasting time, and then you bemoan the fact that life is short. Well, as I said earlier, that final curtain will come down on you whether you live wisely and well or not, and if you want to squander what little time you do have on earth by ruminating rather than by living and risking, and by continually drowning your sorrows in booze, you're welcome to do that. And, if that makes your life a joke, that's the script you've chosen to write for yourself, and it's about time you took some responsibility for doing that.
Quote: I want to believe in a sense of wonder, of awe...
Then toss aside all your preconceived ideas, and your certainty about being right, and try experiencing the world through fresh eyes--there's plenty of wonder and awe available to you once you realize how little you actually know.
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