I’m not sure but it sounds like maybe you’re going down the wrong path of always needing a girl in your life to feel happy. I was that way for many years, and I still have to fight it. I never learned to like myself, so it was always one girlfriend after another (because I’d get dumped). Knowing someone loved me totally gave me a short cut to having more confidence and self esteem. I never liked myself, but if I knew I had a girlfriend, it made it so much easier to go out and face the world. And that’s why the breakups were always so painful, it was never just “oh well, her loss”, it was my entire world and all of my happiness being ripped away from me every time one of these girls chose to leave me. And I’ve learned that you really have to question your own motivations for believing you’re “in love”. It’s easy to convince yourself that a girl was really the greatest thing in the world and you were so in love with her. But in my case, as I dug a little deeper, I realized what I really loved was the things I mentioned above. I loved waking up in the morning and having someone to think about instead of just having to think about my shitty life. I loved that even if I was unemployed, letting myself get out of shape, not going anywhere in life, at least I had a pretty girl who thought I was something special. It’s funny how that always works out, once my bandaid is gone, once my girlfriend isn’t there to make me feel like I’m worth something, all of a sudden it becomes important again to eat healthy and exercise and try to feel good about myself instead of looking for that approval from someone else.

You mentioned just getting over one girl, then you met Jasmine and were happy again, now she left, and within the next few weeks if you suddenly find some new girl to talk to, life will feel amazing again, you’ll get that adrenaline rush of knowing you care about someone and they care about it, and really this pattern can turn into something like a drug addiction. Being single is like withdrawal and then you meet a new girl to get your blood pumping again and it becomes very addictive. It’s important to try to feel happy on your own, do things with your life that make you feel good about yourself. If you really think you’d flourish in an environment like the military, then your family can’t stop you. I don’t know what age you are but once you’re old enough if you aren’t already, you can go sign up at the recruitment office and nobody can stop you. I can understand why your family might be against it, but a lot of that might just be a fear of you getting hurt. If the end result of signing up is that you get some guidance and direction in your life, and if you make it out of your military service in one piece, I think your family will change their tune, they’ll be proud that you did it and happy that it gave you some idea of where you want to go in life.

Well that’s my advice to you. I’ve wasted many years of my life suffering one heart break after another. Rather than doing the hard work of figuring out how to love myself and be happy being young and single, I’ve practically been ready to get married since I was in high school because I just wanted that permanent comfort of knowing someone cared about me and thus I didn’t need to learn to care about myself. Thankfully those girls decided to leave me otherwise I’d be in my early 20s and married to some chick who I probably didn’t really love. Get over Jasmine the hard way, don’t look for a shortcut, stay single, focus on yourself, and if your heart hurts, let it hurt, and know that some day it will go away. Work on becoming a better version of yourself, exercise, work hard, live a good life, become someone who any girl would be happy to have. Strengthen yourself and learn what makes you happy in life that way through the ups and downs of your future relationships, it won’t feel like your whole world is collapsing just because a relationship ended. Don’t do things backwards in life like I tried to do. A fulfilling, loving relationship should be towards the end of the list, it should come after we figure out our own lives, after we figure out ourselves and know what we want and who we are. Trying to find love when everything else is a mess makes the journey a whole lot more painful. I’ve been single this entire year now and it totally sucks but I know I have work to do first.