I've never said that confidence isn't built on competence. What I've said was that just because you haven't dated (now, much) it's not a foregone conclusion that you have no competence in it. And that it's a very limited and reductive way of looking at it. That you're making a wild leap there that is setting yourself up for failure.

I gave examples. I think Edison's invention of the light bulb was one. By the popular narrative, he tried 999 times before he got it right. Does that make him a failure at life because he "mostly failed" on something that by it's very nature you only get right once?

By your thinking, he should have lost all confidence and hope after that first failure and quit trying. By the 400th attempt, he should have just offed himself.

See how limiting, reductive, and left field that thinking is?

If you want a partner and that's what you truly want, then you have to recognize that ALL of your attempts are going to be failures until you find her. That's the nature of dating. It's true for all parties involved.

"You have to try to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your Princess".

To make the leap that you're a failire at life and have no value and so therefore your life isn't worth living because all your frogs have jumped out your hands..... thus far....is self pitying nonsense.

I'm not making fun of you or scorning your loneliness or the emotional punch of feeling like a failure and being left behind.

It sucks. You're not the only one to be or to have ever been there.

I am letting you know that how you're allowing yourself to feel about those emotions and the conclusions your drawing that nearly everyone on this platform who has responded to you about it has pointed out, each in their own way, is not serving you well.