There’s this moment I keep coming back to. I’m on a crowded city bus, wedged into one of those pairs of molded plastic seats next to a girl reading a paperback. Our thighs touch—not in a flirtatious way, just that accidental, human kind of contact that happens in cities. And I don’t say a word. I barely breathe. I’m too busy memorizing the way her breath fogs the window, pretending we’re something we’re not. It’s pathetic. It’s nothing. But it’s also the most intimate physical experience I’ve had in years.
I stayed on that bus three stops past mine. I just wanted to feel like I was part of something. Like I was allowed to be there.
I’m 39 now. No relationship history to speak of. No exes, no shared apartments, no heartbreaks. Not even a kiss. Nothing. I have lived on this planet for nearly four decades and no one has ever chosen me.
You want to talk milestones? Weddings, holidays, first dances, the smell of someone’s shampoo lingering on your hoodie—these are not memories for me. They are museum exhibits. I look, but I don’t touch.
I’ve tried. God, I’ve tried. Dating coaches, online advice, meetups, bars. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve sat at a pub trying to look interesting while slowly dissolving into the upholstery. I’ve worked on myself too. Got in shape. Curated my style. One girl told me I looked like a “cool greaser from an alt universe,” and then immediately introduced me to her boyfriend. That’s the pattern: They admire me like I’m a nice piece of thrift store furniture, then go home with someone else.
Sometimes I feel like a ghost who forgot to die.
It’s hard to describe the texture of this kind of loneliness unless you’ve lived it. It’s not just the absence of sex, though that’s part of it. It’s the absence of witnessing. No one knows what my laugh sounds like in bed. No one knows how I like my coffee in the morning or how I get real quiet when I’m working on something I care about. There’s no record of me in anyone else’s life. I don’t exist in someone else’s memories. That’s a different kind of death.
You develop strange coping habits. You take longer routes home just to avoid happy couples. You mute kissing scenes on Netflix. You fantasize—not about sex, but about someone handing you a cup of tea and saying, “Here, I thought of you.” Your sexual desire doesn’t go away, it just calcifies into something sharp and useless. A thorn where your heart used to be.
I’ve screamed in my car at red lights. Punched my steering wheel because a girl smiled at me once and I didn’t have the guts to say hi. That smile keeps me up at night. Isn’t that ridiculous?
People say, “Focus on yourself.” “Love will come when you’re not looking.” They mean well, but I want to ask them: What if it doesn’t? What if you’re the exception to the rule? What if the universe just… forgot about you?
I work. I’m not some basement-dwelling cartoon. I hold a job. I pay taxes. I shower. I have hobbies. I read. I try to be kind. And none of it matters. Because when I close the door at night, there is no one on the other side of it.
There’s a specific humiliation to being the only single one in a family photo. To standing slightly off to the side at every wedding, holding the camera for everyone else’s couple shots. To sitting at a holiday dinner table while your cousins tell stories about how their kid kept them up last night, and you nod politely, having nothing to contribute except the invisible ache of an empty house waiting for you when you get home.
I’ve done everything they said would make me “datable.” I have a job. An apartment. I work out. I dress well. I know interesting facts about 70s punk bands and vintage cars. But when I walk into a room, it’s like I’m wallpaper. People’s eyes slide off me. I’ve tried to pretend it’s some mysterious aura, but really, it’s absence. I’m not mysterious. I’m invisible.
I go to bars alone sometimes, just to remind myself what the world looks like in motion. I’ll order a beer, sit at the edge of the bar, and watch. The girls with their glittery tops, the guys leaning in too close, the laughter that sounds effortless. I’ll nurse that beer for an hour, maybe two. Sometimes someone talks to me—usually an older guy who wants to talk sports, or a bachelorette party girl who’s too drunk to realize I’m not part of the group. And then the lights go up, and the couples pair off, and I walk home alone.
Every night I sleep on one side of the bed, leaving the other side empty. Not because I’m saving space for someone. I’ve just gotten used to it. Sometimes I wonder if I’d even be able to sleep next to someone else, if the rhythms of my aloneness are so deeply embedded they’ve become permanent.
Sometimes I wonder what it’s like to be held. Really held. Not in a polite hug at a family gathering, not in the stiff arm-over-the-shoulder hug of a friend, but held because someone wants to be closer to you, because being pressed against your skin makes them feel safe.
I’ve never had that. And as time goes on, it’s no longer just a missing experience. It’s a missing limb.
People say love is complicated. I don’t think so. Love is simple. It’s showing up. It’s remembering. It’s choosing someone over and over again. The complication is in finding someone who wants to choose you.
And some of us… never get chosen.
It’s not that I think I’m unworthy of love. I think I could be a good partner. I think I’d show up, remember birthdays, be attentive in small ways that count. But the world doesn’t operate on merit. It doesn’t hand out love as a prize for effort. It’s chaos. It’s luck. It’s walking into the right bar at the right time and saying the right stupid joke to the right girl who happens to laugh.
And I’ve never been lucky.
I know what you’re thinking. “But you’re only 39.” “There’s still time.” “My uncle met his wife at 42.” Sure. Maybe. But hope feels like a cruel joke now. It’s not a motivator. It’s a carrot dangling from a string that keeps pulling further away the closer I get.
And yet. And yet.
Every morning, I make my bed like I’m expecting company. I put on a shirt I know looks good in the right light. I leave the second pillow untouched, unslept-on, waiting.
I’m not naïve anymore. But I haven’t put the pillow away either.
And that, I think, is the worst part.
Because even now, even after all this time, I’m still waiting.
Even after all this time, I still want to be chosen.
