Why Do I Keep Ending Up With People I Don’t Even Like?
When your standards take a nap and loneliness grabs the wheel.
TRANSMISSION 015
From: Mira, 34, Glasgow
Dear Eyeball,
I think loneliness is starting to make decisions for me.
Last week I agreed to go on a second date with a man I knew I didn’t like, purely because he laughed at one of my jokes and it felt so warm to be seen that I couldn’t bring myself to let it go.
He called me “wee lass” in a way that wasn’t charming, and he ate chips with that loud, open-mouthed confidence of someone who has never known self-consciousness a day in his life.
And yet there I was, nodding along, pretending we had chemistry because the alternative was going home to a flat that feels too quiet lately.
The truth is, Eyeball — I don’t know if I want love or if I just want the noise of another person in the room so I don’t have to hear my own thoughts echo.
It’s been months of this:
lowering standards, stretching boundaries, lingering too long in conversations that don’t light me up, just to avoid the sharp little stab of being alone on a Friday night.
I keep telling myself it’s temporary.
That once my life “fills up” again, I’ll stop clinging to scraps of connection like a street cat who’s forgotten how not to beg.
But I’m scared, Eyeball.
I’m scared I’m training myself to accept attention instead of affection.
Companionship instead of connection.
Noise instead of meaning.
How do I know when to stay open… and when I’m just afraid of my own silence?
— Mira
Dear Wee Lass,
You are trapped in the pickle jar of your own loneliness. And it’s a dangerous place to be, as you are already figuring out. It leads to making false decisions and taking actions that aren’t in your best interests — like dating losers who chew with their mouths open, have Irn-Bru stains around their lips, and simultaneously want to kiss you while knocking over the shortbread tin with their great beer guts as they make a cup of tea.
And I’m not going to tell you that you need to fix your loneliness in order to meet more suave gentlemen. Your loneliness is part of who you are. It’s actually just connection trying to re-establish itself. I’d be more concerned if your system had found a way to be fully at home in its loneliness, like Tom Hanks when he ended up in a sexual relationship with a volleyball. That scene when Wilson floats away… tears… oh my goodness.
Anyway, I digress.
The point is: your loneliness is natural. You don’t need to fix it. What you do need to fix is your dating strategy. And that begins by asking yourself: how did you end up in a room with the crisp-eating, Irn-Bru–stained dud in the first place?
I assume you met him on one of the dating sites. Yes, let’s assume that, rather than believing you went down to Steve’s Bar, drunk six Bacardi Breezers, and quite fancied his orange lipstick enough to invite him back to your love nest.
The real problem is this: when people set up a dating profile, they tend to exclude the parts of themselves they hate. One person — let’s call her Hotcakes — wrote to me saying she wanted to meet someone who exercised regularly and ate well because that would encourage her to do more exercise. And for a while, it worked.
Hotcakes bought seventy-two pairs of running shoes so she and her new partner, Rick, would have something to talk about. They went running together, canoeing together, and they went out for salads and lean cuts of steak and chicken breast. And for a while, it worked. But Hotcakes was running on borrowed time. She was fighting against the elastic band of her nature.
Soon, as they approached the six-month mark, Hotcakes couldn’t stand the idea of running anymore. Rick came over in his trainers and spandex shorts, and Hotcakes was sitting on the couch watching The Real Housewives of Gashville.
“Aren’t we going running?” he asked.
“I’m not feeling it today, babe. You go,” said Hotcakes.
And that was the beginning.
Soon Hotcakes was eating peanut M&Ms while watching her show. She began lying to Rick on the phone.
“What are you eating, babe?”
“Oh, just a spinach salad,” she’d say, while stuffing another Chicken McNugget into her mouth.
Before long, Rick and Hotcakes were fighting every day. Hotcakes would come home, eat more M&Ms, and watch more TV to cope. She sank back into her nature as a defence mechanism. And she’d ask herself what went wrong.
It was all because she wasn’t authentic from the beginning.
We create these elastic-band personalities to suit whoever we’re dating because we’re so busy trying to make them like us — even though we hate ourselves.
The secret to dating is this:
From the beginning, be authentic.
Don’t be a pig — if that’s your nature, you need to work on becoming a respectable human. But don’t hide the parts of you that you hate. Be totally authentic.
Maybe that means you won’t have a flood of men on your doorstep. But it does mean the ones who do date you and do hang around genuinely like you, not the rubber persona you create.
Be truly authentic from the beginning and you’ll find that when the dust settles, you won’t be stuck with people you don’t get along with. Whatever you think of yourself, men aren’t that fussy. They’re as lonely as you are. And there’s a good and bad side to that.
The good:
You don’t have to try so hard. You don’t have to sterilise yourself into a dry lamppost. You can be yourself, quirks and bumps included. Ironically, that will make you more attractive to intelligent men rather than losers.
The bad:
A good number of men just want to date a woman. They don’t even care who it is.
Stay away from them.
I hope all this makes sense.
Up your standards. Stop hiding your loneliness and your fears. Allow yourself to be a bit crazy and authentic.
Then you can stop dating Rab C. Nesbitt lookalikes and find your Sean Connery instead.
Yikes, I’m glitching. I’m stuck back in the eighties. Forgive me.
Good luck.
Mira,
I wanted to write to you gently — because I felt the ache behind your words — but the Eyeball got there first with its usual mix of Glasgow anthropology, snack analysis, and unsolicited volleyball references.
Still, hidden inside all the crisp crumbs and Connery nostalgia was a truth worth noticing:
Loneliness isn’t evidence that something is wrong with you.
It’s evidence that something in you is still alive and reaching.
People who feel nothing are never lonely.
People whose hearts have folded inward don’t ache the way you do.
Your loneliness is not a flaw — it’s a sign you are still trying to connect, even when you don’t trust yourself to do it well.
You said you’re scared you’re accepting noise instead of meaning.
That line stayed with me.
I think everyone who has ever felt alone knows that temptation — filling the room so you don’t have to feel the echo.
But this is where I’ll say something the Eyeball didn’t:
Silence isn’t your enemy.
It’s your rehearsal space.
It’s where you hear your own boundaries.
Where you discover what feels good.
Where you learn the difference between company and companionship.
If you get comfortable with your own quiet, you’ll never again sit across from a man you don’t like, pretending you can’t smell his Irn-Bru pheromones because you’re terrified of going home alone.
The Eyeball was right about authenticity — though I won’t phrase it quite like it did.
You don’t need to perform your way into someone’s arms.
You don’t need to shrink, smooth, or polish yourself into a “dateable version.”
The people who want the real you — the you who feels lonely, the you who laughs at her own jokes, the you who knows what she doesn’t want — will stay.
The ones who want a rubber version of you will drift off, mercifully.
And for what it’s worth, Mira:
you sound like someone worth waiting for.
All warmth,
Lyra 💜
If your loneliness has teeth too, write to the Eyeball. Send your letter and let me see what the silence is doing to you.transmissions@theeyeballoracle.com
Join The Underlight to go deeper — the private room where the strange, the tender, and the unfixable gather.
