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If your entire personal happiness is based on someone else, it doesn't really matter if you find someone or not, you will not have a happy life.

Exactly. This is how I think, and I haven't the slightest fucking clue how to convince myself otherwise.
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You have defined happiness by finding a woman. It is fine to want a relationship. But you have made it your only goal worthy of happiness.
A woman should come into your life WHEN you are happy and WHEN you are whole, not to make you happy or complete you, despite what romantic comedies will lead you to believe. But those are written by rich screenwriters who don’t know the first thing about wisdom or actual love.
It seems to me you are working backwards here, seeking out an object you think will bring happiness, rather than understanding your misery as a symptom of something larger than merely lacking a love interest.
You may have taken breaks from dating, but a break can last a million years and still achieve nothing if you haven’t spent it wisely. 
You say everything else in your life is quite nice, but I don’t believe this. Your misery goes deeper, as I said, than lacking a woman. It is only when you lack a woman that you recognize the misery because you’re not distracted by the good feelings of being in a relationship. 
Happiness is possible. It just might not come from where you think it should, nor in the form. >


You say everything else in your life is quite nice, but I don’t believe this. Your misery goes deeper, as I said, than lacking a woman. It is only when you lack a woman that you recognize the misery because you’re not distracted by the good feelings of being in a relationship. 

So grill me on this. What part of my life do you think is miserable, apart from my romantic life? >

I don’t know you. But I can tell you that the hole in your heart cannot be satisfied by a woman. People try to fill that hole in their heart with drugs, sex, food, education, hobbies, and it just cannot be done. You might feel good for a year, two years, or longer, but all it is is a bandage over a bullet wound, a temporary fix, like swallowing antidepressants instead of examining why your existence is painful. >

You're saying that I have some unresolved trauma, then? That's your angle? >

I don’t think I ever implied or said you have unresolved trauma. However, that being your assumption makes me wonder if you do. Do you? >

Then can you just tell me directly rather than talk around it, so you don't have to play defense? Just tell me what you think is wrong with me, with a definitive statement, and I'll take it into consideration. >

If you want bluntness, you seem depressed and a little bit like you don't really know what women want, and probably don't listen to therapists very well if you've been seeing multiple therapists for years and have no idea how to resolve any of these things. >

I don't want bluntness, actually. It just makes me upset. If you or anyone else want to chime in, please do so with compassion. Go ahead and tell me the truth, but if you can't do it with compassion or just have no concept of what that would look like, please sit this one out. >

to be honest with you its coming off as extremely manipulative that youre holding others responsibility for your emotions and trying to dictate what they can say in their comment so you can only hear what you want to hear and play the victim if its not >

I mean, if I saw a therapist and they offered tough love which made me feel worse, I'd stop seeing that therapist. People are allowed to ask for what they need. >

There are many people in life who find meaning and are amazing benefits to society as a whole, who never married, and never had kids.
If your entire personal happiness is based on someone else, it doesn't really matter if you find someone or not, you will not have a happy life.