I see.

First of all, I’m sorry for writing this much, but in my opinion these words are required, and the issue you’re going through is not easy to solve and requires a lot of words. This paragraph was written after I wrote all of the following.

You are neither defective nor is Earth actual hell. However, life is certainly a very hard struggle, there is no denying that. And most people have no real clue navigating life, most are either miserable or lucked into a “good” life. And then many of the people who lucked out into a good life give shitty advice because they think their good life is somehow their achievement. That makes it incredibly hard to figure out how to achieve a good life, because there’s so many conflicting advice from people who have no clue.

I’m not saying that I have a clue, because that is for you to figure out. But I have started life shittily and I am now living a good life.

You’re looking for advice, that fact alone is incredibly important. I would never be where I am without the incredible support of all the people I’ve interacted with over the years. Many people have too much ego to look for any kind of advice, so you looking for it bodes very well for your future. If you keep that up, I’m sure you’ll get to a good place. However, a word of warning, be very suspicious of all advice you get and evaluate each piece of advice you get carefully, including mine, otherwise you will end up chasing the wrong advice a lot of your time, ending up not actually improving anything.

You weren’t good enough for him. That much you figured out yourself. From what you have said so far, I believe that to be accurate. And this hurts a lot. While you have little enough ego to ask for advice, your ego is still there and it’s one of the worst feelings for it to get hurt. For most, the feeling of their ego being hurt is worse than any physical pain they could receive. So I’m feeling with you, I’m sorry that you’re feeling what you’re feeling.

The question now is, can you endure this pain and turn it into something positive, or will you enter a downward spiral that is incredibly hard to get out of? Currently, you’re on the path of the downward spiral. Your seeking advice here is your attempt to not stay on this path. That is very very admirable and requires lots of strength. I hope for you that you can keep up this strength, because I’m sure you can do it and I just want you (and everyone) to be able to be happy.

If my words can help you, I would be very glad. However I’m also just a human, I make mistakes, I’m not perfect. I don’t know you or your experiences beyond what you offered to share here. So please disregard what I say if it doesn’t help you, tell me where I’m wrong. Because I’m also wrong a lot.

So the issue is how desirable you are. And that you are not desirable enough.

You are absolutely right that what physical attractiveness concerns, you are on a timer. In heterosexual relationships, how the woman looks matters to the man, and vice versa, but not as much. Male attraction is generally based on female youthfulness and the related visual cues for that. So, as a woman, getting older means less physical attractiveness, that is the simple reality.

However, there are multiple mitigating factors.

First of all, makeup and beauty surgery exists, as well as simply being fit, taking care of your body, using clothing/style etc etc. There are incredibly many ways to raise your physical attractiveness, that I’m sure you’re not all using. All of these things combined can make you physically very attractive until late, very late in life. I’m a man and there are plenty of women in their 50s I still find physically attractive and would have no problem being sexual and having a relationship with solely based on physical attractiveness.

Second of all, even though physical attractiveness is more important for women than for men, it is still not the only important thing. How a woman behaves in all kinds of situations, what she believes and so on, still matters. In fact, I would argue that for good men, this actually matters much more than physical attractiveness. And this part of your desireability (hopefully) only increases the older you get, the more experience you gather, the more you improve yourself. That is why I said earlier that you’re on a good path with this post right here. If you want to be desirable, work on your personality. Figure out what is attractive to the men you want to attract.

For me, for example, the most attractive qualities in a woman that makes me want to fuck her brains out all the time and keep doing it for the rest of my life, is self-awareness, true openness, a growth mindset, little to no ego, spontaneity, optimism, to only name a few. If you are like that, I barely care about how you look.

So, what I’m saying is, no, nothing is lost. You don’t have to despair. Your desireability can be greatly improved, if you want to. A fun side effect of that will be that you will simply become a better, more confident, more relaxed, more independent person. You might even find that you don’t need the love of anyone, because you know deep in your heart that you are “good enough” for yourself, not for anyone else.

I noticed a couple of “problems” with your personality just in the little bit you revealed here. I don’t mean that as an insult, I mean that in the way that there are possibilities for you to improve. These “problems” are very likely not even your fault, everyone grows up in an environment that isn’t perfect, with people that aren’t perfect, everyone starts with some kind of shitty beliefs.