MaximusJ I agree with everything that everyone else above has stated. In addition, here is my advice. Delete the dating apps. They are a feeding frenzy. Women are looking for affirmation that they are attractive, some are looking for meaningless sex, some are truly looking for a serious relationship (but they are so inundated with guys who only look good while being stupid or only want sex) that they are missing the mark. Stay off internet dating completely unless you are just looking to get laid, and from what I hear, that is getting more and more difficult to do.
I'm 42 as well and the dating scene is an absolute nightmare anymore. You come across as intelligent and level headed, however; you also seem too eager to find someone. As others have stated above, take some time off. Learn to be comfortable with yourself, accept the fact that you may never find someone and learn to live life for yourself without looking for "the one." When you get comfortable with who you are and get to a point where you really don't even want to date, is when you end up finding the person that best suits you. It's funny that this is how it happens, but it seems that it's always the case.
I recently read The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck and an excerpt from the book states, "The desire for more positive experience is itself a negative experience. And, paradoxically, the acceptance of one's negative experience is itself a positive experience."
Don't stress it and don't pay to talk to anyone about it. Step away from the dating scene, delete the apps and do things that make you happy.
Down-low, dirty advice. Get your ass in a gym and lose those 20 pounds. This will give your brain something to focus on instead of women. Get focused on it and let your goals consume you. You'll drop that weight, increase your self esteem and women will start noticing you more. This also helps in the process of getting to know people. Once you start going to the gym, you will start to encounter people that go to the same gym. Continuing to see these people on a regular basis gets them familiar with you, this in turn, leads to eye contact and potentially non-forced conversations. Simply going up to a woman that you find attractive and trying to talk to her is not going to work. (In some cases it does, but it's extremely rare.) The more a woman sees you, the more comfortable she is going to be getting to know you. Even if you don't start talking to someone from the gym, you're losing that weight, getting in shape and getting re-familiarized with actual people and not people from apps.
Also, the first thing to understand, when it comes to women, isn't how you dress, how you look, how you speak, whether or not you are a good guy, etc. EVERYTHING is based off their emotions. Now, with that being said, if how you dress, how you look, how you speak, etc. makes them feel a certain way about you, they will let you know. Once they let you know they are interested, they will let you know to what degree their interest lies, purely physical, relationship material and whatnot. You have to understand that different women want different things. Some like clean cut business type guys, some like masculine, tattoo'd, jeans and t-shirt guys. My advice, be somewhere in the middle. Have the ability to pull off the intelligent, clean cut, classy, gentleman, but also be that bad boy that women want to throw themselves at....but don't even focus on this right now. Take some time off, find some activities that make you happy (btw, women will ask what you do in your downtime or what hobbies you have, they will want to be a part of it when you start dating someone regularly) and reinvent yourself. Focus on you right now, you have the rest of life to waste on someone you will eventually hate after it's all said and done.
Good luck, report back and let us know how things are going or if you have any questions that we can help with.
