Totally agree with this. I have an older (late 50's) gay friend who considers himself 'over the hill'. He talks constantly about how hard it is to find someone etc. However, by comparison to myself and my other straight friends, it's trivially easy for him to find both sex and companionship. Essentially it was so easy when he was young and handsome, he learned an aversion to trying. It's not so much that he doesn't know how, it's that he feels he shouldn't have to. As an average looking straight guy, I find his entitlement absurd.
Same goes for OP. I'm literally his age, don't own property, have less in savings (I don't work in tech), and consider myself both lucky and free. Also lucky not to live in the US, where other people's perceptions of your relative wealth seems much more important for dating / social life etc.
Perspective governs so much of how meaningful and rich our lives seem. I look at my family / contemporaries who have children, or have crushed themselves at a desk for twenty years and feel inestimable gratitude I didn't sacrifice my life on that alter. OP's problem is a long period unemployment and depression, not some kind of nebulous 'failure'. Fortunately it's readily fixable. 43 is not remotely 'past it'.
> Essentially it was so easy when he was young and handsome, he learned an aversion to trying
I think a lot of women experience the same upon reaching middle age. In their 20s and early 30s, getting a date, sex, long-term relationship, etc. was as easy as firing up the app and letting a dozen men dance like monkeys for the chance to take her out.
By late 30s, this dynamic is gone for most women, and even starts reversing itself where by 40's, many men - and not just the "alphas" or gay men who also had an easy time in their younger years - have a lot more power in the dating market, though mostly because they aren't so beholden to their hormones, and can make decisions based on what benefits a particular women and relationship brings to his life. In most cases, the negatives outweigh the positives, and thus women and gay men now get to experience the same odds that most men dealt with all their life.
Same goes for OP. I'm literally his age, don't own property, have less in savings (I don't work in tech), and consider myself both lucky and free. Also lucky not to live in the US, where other people's perceptions of your relative wealth seems much more important for dating / social life etc.
Perspective governs so much of how meaningful and rich our lives seem. I look at my family / contemporaries who have children, or have crushed themselves at a desk for twenty years and feel inestimable gratitude I didn't sacrifice my life on that alter. OP's problem is a long period unemployment and depression, not some kind of nebulous 'failure'. Fortunately it's readily fixable. 43 is not remotely 'past it'.