Best ways to defeat Depression.Name what works for you?

This is not setting your standards "too high." This is just setting your standards frelling WRONG!

Teenagers have no experience with relationships and they're overcome with hormones 23.5 hours a day, so naturally all they have to distinguish one person from another is their looks and the clues that popular culture teaches them like hip language and the right brand of sneakers. But as you become mature, the whole point is that you are actually supposed to mature and develop more useful ways of distinguishing people, especially as potential mates. If you're a 40-year-old guy and still looking for a girl who moves like the ones in the rock videos, or a 40-year-old gal looking for the guys who prance around like spoiled football stars, somewhere along the way you missed a signpost on the pathway to maturity.

People are famous for jiving each other, especially when they form packs and each one tries to assert him/herself as the alpha. You can't assume that the stupid things people say in those situations are the actual factors they use to make key decisions about their lives. Sure, the really immature ones do, but the others are just jiving them.

Remember, go to the places where people do/watch/discuss the things you like to do/watch/discuss. If you go to a gym you're going to meet people who like to work out. Is that something you're really interested in and want to share with your girlfriend? Yeah sure even I go to a gym, a lot of us go because we need the workout. But we warp in, do our routine and warp out so we can get back to the life we enjoy. We don't stop and socialize!

The advantage of going to a place that features things or activities you like is that you will be paying attention to the things and activities, rather than cruising around with your chick radar set on maximum. You look a whole lot more natural when you're not thinking about finding girls, and jeezy weezy does that ever make a guy more attractive! Women want to see the real you, the guy who likes orchids or ancient manuscripts or carburetors or Indian food or budgies or oriental rugs or funny movies--or even photos of the Holocaust. Not the guy who's so preoccupied with finding a woman that when women are around he's lost his sense of identity,

I don't think an age difference is important if it's less than twenty years. At that point you're members of two different generations and you might have trouble finding common ground.

Apparently other people don't think that. Let me give you a clue, they don't estimate your age based on your physical appearance. It's how you handle yourself and how you talk. I am 64 and damn if I don't look it. Varicose veins, trifocals, solid gray hair, wrinkles. But everybody thinks I'm in my 40s because I just don't talk and act like an old fart. Apparently you don't either, despite your impression of yourself.

I could tell by your previous remark that you have low self esteem. You consider yourself "mentally old for your chronological age," yet everyone thinks you're younger than you are. These other people see the real you. You see a damaged image of yourself based on something that's gone wrong inside you. Like I said, you need to see a therapist to figure out what that is and get rid of the damn thing.

There are millions of guys like you out there but they have a better opinion of themselves and it makes them more attractive. Another clue: Nobody likes a person who has a low opinion of himself. It's just damn creepy!

You have mastered all the tricks for "proving" to yourself that you'll never find a woman that you can build a relationship with. Are you a sock puppet of DarkSidzz? Do you call women "females" like you're a Klingon anthropologist who just landed on earth to collect specimens for the zoo on his homeworld? Darky really is inferior but it's because he chooses to make himself inferior and he works at it really hard. If you don't make that choice and do that work, then you won't be inferior. This whole thing about being unattractive is IN YOUR HEAD.

GET SOME HELP DUDE! Shrinks see twenty guys like you every week. Sorry to burst your bubble but you ain't so unique. They can straighten you out in a few weeks. You'll figure out what you really want in a woman (right now you haven't got the faintest clue, trust me), you'll learn how to recognize that when you see it (right now you can't see anything except the superficial plus the overlay you put on them from your own expectations, trust me on that too), and you'll realize what you have that they will find appealing (right now you've got this whole veneer that you pull over yourself so the real you isn't visible to you or anybody else, you can trust me on that too because I been there done that dude).

Going to dances? Remember what I said. Go to places where people are doing/seeing/talking about things you like. If you go to a dance you're going to meet people who like to dance.

Sorry, I shouldn't knock dancing since it piqued your interest. It sounds like you enjoy dancing. I do. Go for it.

These days a lot of people meet in chat rooms. I know a couple who met in a poetry chat room because they both like poetry and they even both tried to write it. All they talked about was poetry and they got to know the part of each other that they found to be a window into their souls. They started e-mailing, then after about six months graduated to phone calls, then after they were really comfortable talking to each other on the phone they got together for lunch at the mall. They've been married for five years now.

My wife and I started talking when we found out that we both liked rock and roll. This was back in the 1970s when everybody over 30 was compulsively insisting that they never really liked the stuff, they only listened to jazz, blues and folk music. We talked about the meaning of the lyrics and the emotions they expressed and the feelings that the power chords arouse in you and what it's like being in an arena full of people standing up and yelling and knowing half the words by heart. That was our window into each other's soul. We've been married for 30 years and we just went to the Velvet Revolver and Maroon Five concerts. For our 20th anniversary we got scalper tickets to the Metallica/Guns'n'Roses double bill at the Rose Bowl. We've even been to the Reggae Sunsplash in Jamaica, twice. She even encouraged me to pull my bass out of the closet and I've been playing in a band.

There's somebody out there for you. But first you have to find yourself. Finding yourself is a hell of a lot harder than finding somebody else because they aren't hiding but you are. Fortunately there are lots of people who can help. We were 34 when we got married, you're not that much older.