As someone who has reached middle age and whose relationship experience is limited to about a one year period in my mid-30's, my familiarity with being single is pretty strong.
I don't think blaming is a particularly helpful strategy here. Having been single but spending a lot of time helping friends out in their relationships, both men and women, and simple observation has led me to see that men often like to blame women, and women often like to blame men. Yet, neither are the problem. If a woman isn't interested in me, it isn't the fault of "women". The most likely scenario is that they simply didn't have an interest in me, and people are free to not be interested. Nobody is owed anyone else's affections. It doesn't matter how attractive you think you are, how nice you think you are, or anything else. Nobody owes anyone else romantic affection.
When we start to imagine that we "deserve" certain things from other people because, as we see it, we've put in "the work" to be desirable we are no longer thinking in a healthy way. That leads to the objectification of other people, that leads to viewing our fellow human beings as things to be possessed. That the other person exists for me. From a Christian perspective this can never be acceptable. the Chief Commandment we have received is to love our neighbor as ourselves, because if we love God then we love those made in His image--which is every single person we ever come into contact with.
Simultaneously, the answer isn't to fall back into self-loathing. Self-blame isn't going to help; self-hatred is not humility, modesty, nor compassionate; because quite ironically self-blame and self-hatred produces anger and bitterness that ends up being used to harm others. And frequently self-blame can mutate into the blaming of others; especially when we perceive the criticisms or even the most harmless words of others as personal attack--we may think, "I am already angry with myself, why is this person now heaping more pain on me?" When that isn't even their intent--and so such things can result in lashing out.
Learning to respect ourselves and others, to learn a peaceableness about where we find ourselves is, I think an important lesson we all need to learn over the course of our lives (because it can't be as though it is a one time lesson, we are always learning the tough lessons, and many, many, many times again and again).
But in learning to accept that it is okay if someone else is not interested in us, that it is okay to spend seasons alone (perhaps even very long ones, perhaps even for most or the entirety of our lives) and that what truly matters isn't that I have someone who desires me, but that I learn how to grow and love others even when it does not benefit me, means far more in the grand scheme of everything.
Take the opportunities of singleness as the season to grow and figure ourselves out, to sort out what kind of priorities we have about life. Because the well-lived life is not a rose-colored one; but a life which has endured the tests and trials and has gone through the fire.
-CryptoLutheran
