So, I'm a 39 year old neurodivergent guy who's spent a lot of my life fairly isolated from other people.

There are a few reasons for it - it started with getting bullied at school for my deficiencies, which really hit my self worth and made me hide from people. In young adulthood, a lot of friends would betray me for similar reasons - to look cool, to designate me as the loser of the tribe etc. Relationships didn't work much better either - the person I tried that with had her own demons and tended to lash out at me, being very hot and cold - loving and full of praise one moment, then angry, lashing out and looking at me like I'm dirt the next. Because of all of this, I've always had a wall up that I am very hesitant to let people into. Loneliness has always been a problem, although usually I ignore it and let it go.

In the last five years that's begun to change as I've had a few small groups of friends I discovered through tabletop games, friends of friends, talking, etc. Even then I've kept them all quite at a distance. As far as I can tell I've done it for defense due to all the previous things I went through. Basically I'm very much an introvert, and I find I enjoy my own company and doing my own thing - too much so as I seem to have just rejected most people altogether.

Recently one of those groups had a friend that they wanted to set up with me, and we got on really well. Talked all the time, went out a couple times, really seemed to connect on levels I never had with a woman before, even my ex. Long story short, after some time she didn't return romantic interests. I respected it and remain her friend and value that friendship, but the one thing that kept coming back in my head was - 'you'll probably never find someone like her again', followed by 'was that your last chance at a partner just passing you by'. That's been a real blow over the last few months - usually when I think I'm past it, something happens to bring it back to the surface (seeing her kissing another guy, for example) which starts the self-doubt chain of 'you weren't good enough' or 'you'll never have that for yourself'.

Long story short, I don't want to be in that position any more. I will never be the most outgoing of guys, but I also know that meeting with a few small groups on occasion and spending most of the rest of the time at work or home isn't going to work. A partner, and more of my people in life, are out there- I just have to find them.

I've decided to start going out around town more just for the hell of it - libraries, cafes, parks, those third spaces we hear so much about. It's very daunting since as an introvert people are very challenging to me, but I have to find my people, I don't want another five or ten years to pass with no real progress on that front. I don't know what precisely I'm going to do in those spaces yet, but I'm hoping something will come of it.

Also going to get therapy to help with the social skills stuff and the loneliness stuff, and perhaps learn how to deal with the trauma of the past and build my self-confidence, and find a balance between enjoying my own company and finding life companions (not just a partner, but also other lifelong friends).

Wish me luck!