Does anyone feel some many of us are pretending in romantic relationships?

I personally hate being alone. I crave connection and have high ideals of what love is, and what it can be.

However, I've been single for many many years because I can't find a girl i'm really comfortable with. Not because I have high standards of beauty or wealth, or whatever, but because I value depth and intensity of meaning and connection. Something really pure and true.

And I feel completely smothered that I'm perceived as the weird one, literally the only odd one out in the friend group and in my family that's alone. And I feel that people think I have a high ego, or that i'm gay, or just like lying, or just WEIRD when I tell them : I JUST haven't found the right person.

But then i just look at relationships around me, and I think: why are all these people even together?

and i feel better because I'm like: very few of you are actual "soulmates", much less in healthy relationships.

Like if you look around, real love and connection is a fucking LUXURY, and we should stop expecting it to be a regular commodity (although it should).

I see friends of mine dating girls they would NEVER be friends with, but since THEY WANT TO DATE and be the BIG GUY and tell EVERYONE they "have a girl", they'll enter these nonsensical fake relationships and expect us to applaud them and imitate them when there's NOTHING THERE.

And it works! Everyone's like oh my goddd so cute togetherrrrr.

Like I have MANY friendships that are 20x more deep and rich than the relationships they have with people they'll share a bed with every night.

And sure, after a while, there might be some attachment growing out of habit and love hormones slowly building up with physical contact and that's great, but there will never be real thrill. There will never be real love.

And I should feel bad for them, right? But i feel the opposite. They create a society where they enforce these social expectations for everyone else to feel fucking shitty, and alone, and they'll literally distort love itself, and straight up live a lie and then act as the authority on LOVE and want to fix you.

I understand people throughout history who got with people to raise families or for economic reasons. They had little choice.

It was rape or social exclusion, and they didn't have much choice, or even maybe an expectation of romance, which is an idea from 19th century French aristocrats.

SO WHY, now that we do have CHOICE in modern times to not sign the fucking BS marriage contract, do some many people still pretend and hide?

and instead of growing and flourishing as individuals first, and finding what really works for us, we treat relationships as another item on the checklist, like a 9-5 work contract?

Sometimes i just want to leave society.

But now I seriously consider doing the same because I think these people are happier than me.

I've reached a point where I might choose to date a girl that feels just a bit close, and once i finally have PEACE on the outside from society leaving me the F alone, secretly rejoice INSIDE and stay who I am in secret. And i feel i'll be all the more myself in private because i won't be constantly in a state of shame and anxiety of other people prying and judging weighing on my mind.

I feel questioned and analyzed all the time like I have the word "LEPER" tattooed on my forehead.