I know exactly how you feel. At one point while reading I thought "Did I write this and forget about it?" It's sad that you and I and many others are living in a world where being called "funny" is an insult to us. We don't want to be funny, we want to be "dependable", we want to hear "You make me feel safe" or "I'm glad you're here for me". We want to be good listers but nobody ever talks to us. "Haha, you're such a funny guy." Is all we get.

What people answering you don't understand is the difference between fighting for love and fighting for the CHANCE for love. This is like the difference between struggling to win at a slot machine and struggling to get in the casino. Then people try to convince you that there's a system to it. Please, as if we don't know the rules - shower, groom yourself, be assertive but not pushy, read the room, show interest in their interests but don't interrogate, complement their efforts, be charming and make them laugh. We can follow all this to the tee but all we ever hear is "Yes, but not you". And don't get me started at the cowardism. There's never constructive criticism, at best there's a " no" at worst there's a lie. How many times have I heard "Sorry, I'm not really interested in a relationship right now." only to find the same person dating somebody 2 weeks later. Must have been a life changing 2 weeks to change your mantra like that.

The problem is that there's an appropriate time for trying and to be picked. I understand what you're saying about people I Gaza, but this is a fucked up situation in general and outside the norm. I got raised in a normal household, went to a normal school, had normal hobbies and normal friends yet still, nobody ever saw any romantic value in me. And now I'm old, I don't have the safe environment of of innocence but I'm also not allowed to make mistakes. I have zero experience yet I'm expected to outcompete everybody. That's the issue. If I'm interested in someone, that someone will always have options beyond me. What others are basically saying is that you'll find love only if someone comes along that is so cornered that you're their only option. I don't want to be someone's only choice, I want to be someone's first choice, but people like us aren't even second, third or fourth - we are not even on the list. There will be always younger, better more successfully and better looking options. And the older we get the more baggage and expectations people were interested in have.

I feel like a car that hasn't been sold by the dealer, then new models came along and nobody wants the old one anymore. And the longer it sits in the lot, the more people start to wonder what's wrong with it and why it hasn't been sold. It becomes a loop of people seeing your lack of worth and assigning even less worth to you. And then at some point you become a write-off, a statistic - cars not sold, lives not lived.