Can this not become a thread whinging about how much harder it is to have a successful relationship please, the gender politics of who wins family battles (women) and who wins employment/career stuff (men) belongs elsewhere.
It's one thing to point out that being happy alone is a healthy starting point before any new relationship, it's another to start suggesting that relationships are pointless. Not really the thread for it.
In my opinion it moved past relationship prospects and into "relationships are pointless". A valid subject for discussion but maybe not why people come to this thread.
No one is saying that relationships are pointless. I am saying that in order to have a healthy relationship, you have to understand what makes relationships work, especially nowadays, and that involves understanding yourself and your partner, and the things that are going to come at you in life.
Since the second wave feminism movement got welded with the sexual revolution, women have been fed the idea that they can have it all. They can behave as men do, can have families and careers, can sleep around all they want, have kids with different men, and then in their thirties, still find a high value man that meets all their excessive criteria to give them the fantasy life they want. This is unrealistic and unhealthy, and makes sure that relationships are doomed to fail. Like it or not, there are double standards, ones that work both ways, because men and women (while equally valuable) are not the same. The fact is that no one can have it all, not men or women. Compromises and sacrifices are made. While you're out there driving your career, you won't see your kids growing up, while you're at home raising a family, you fall behind on your career progression. Choices are made, and paths are chosen consciously or not. People always think about the choices they didn't take, and don't realise those doors closed because of the other choices they made instead.
You've got to understand what's important in life if you ever want to find happiness within yourself, let alone with someone else. You've got to understand that relationships are not like the movies, that they evolve and change. Maybe the "spark" at the beginning goes away, but that is the time to recognise and build the deeper, long-lived relationship that evolves, instead of throwing it away in a never ending chase for the adolescent first rush of attraction. It takes a conscious effort, and if you don't understand that because you or your partner is suffering from Disney Princess syndrome, you're doomed to failure and unhappiness. People addicted to social media don't understand that it is showing a fake world that simply makes you unhappy with your own life. Women who want the cliche "6 foot tall man" don't understand that they are disregarding nine out of ten men, and fixating on a purely physical attribute that says nothing about a person's ability to be a good life-partner, and is the exact same thing that men are often criticised for.
If people can understand and address the issues in a modern relationship, then maybe they won't need to come here and post in this thread. Maybe they can have healthier relationships that last because they have an understanding of the mechanisms at work when life dips into a trough and people start to wonder what if they'd done something different, or if the grass is greener elsewhere. Instead, they should be recognising the signs, and working together to get back on track.
The first step to that is understanding that you are your own person, an individual that wants to be with someone, but is whole and complete without anyone. A person that understands themselves and the source of their own happiness in this life. A person that doesn't validate themselves through their relationship and is more than just one half of a couple. A fully rounded individual.
Let's face it, most of the people in this forum and thread are men, and we're the worst at understanding what we feel, and how to express it, let alone understanding the feelings of others, even our partners. We need all the help we can get, and it's better to have it before the relationship crashes and you have to pick up the pieces of a life that could have been kept whole with a bit of early intervention. It's important to understand the life you find yourself in, the direction you want to go in, and who you want to go there with, instead of just drifting through life and a relationship, and then be surprised when it all goes wrong before you know it.
