hey again – glad you found it interesting, it’s certainly helped me stick to my goals when I would’ve otherwise put it in the too difficult to deal with bucket..

So, good to hear you got out travelling but pity you got called back in – that would’ve been an excellent chance to say not me these time though. Seems you do more than your fair share of lifting and it’s not wrong to respect your own time. Helps others respect your boundaries and shows you value yourself.

I do get it feels like a relationship will help bring happiness into your life but honestly, all the best relationships start when you are already happy with your life/yourself. Doesn’t mean stop hoping or practising social/emotional connections in the meantime but I do think you can help your chances by working on areas within your control first. It’ll help with not being so disappointed each time something doesn’t work out and increases your natural resilience to bounce back and try again. The trick is to start small – you wouldn’t try and win a case without putting in all the prep hours right….

So – actually, I think you do know but you don’t want to admit it to yourself as it involves facing up to some of the other issues you’re avoiding dealing with.

You are clearly a smart guy but this thread can’t help but remind me of the famous Einstein quote “Definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”….( hopefully not too badly mis-quoted but you get the drift..

Logically, looking forwards, how do you believe you are you going to have both time and the mental capacity free for a relationship until you tackle some of the work and home situations you have. Even if things were going swimmingly well with this new lady it doesn’t sound like you’d have the time to enjoy it – or even practically your own private place to go to unless you plan on always going out / to hers. Way ahead of where you are, I get, but since you do sound like someone who likes to think things through – doesn’t it seem therefore a good idea to start working on some of those whilst seeing what happens on the relationship front.

Pretty much everybody I know in a healthy relationship met when they were both in a good place themselves – it certainly increases the chances and you can see by the number of other threads on this website how many people are in relationships they’d rather not be!

But it doesn’t mean you have to start with drastic changes – try just saying no to a single work over-time request. I know it’s great to feel needed/indispensable and that you also use it to hide as you mention – but you’d be amazed how small changes snowball into you feeling great about yourself – which funnily enough is amazingly attractive 🙂

Hope it helps – you sound like a really nice guy who’s genuinely trying, let us know how it goes.

Hey – new on here but had to join as wanted to reach out.

My take, you should be proud of yourself already for realising you don’t want to continue as is – that takes courage as change is difficult and means getting outside your comfort zones, taking risks and being unsure of outcomes. No getting around it with all the analysis and pre-thinking in the world. Same as in business, you will never know all the answers.

The trick I find is to build your confidence in your ability to bounce back in areas you feel vulnerable by taking small chances to start and then bigger as your comfort zone grows.

For example – you mention having minimal friends – how about starting just to aim to open up and grow one of those friendships or a new one if better – before jumping into trying for the whole relationship piece which is a whole different level of openness. You mentioned right at the start how at home you feel with guns – and I’m guessing from your description of where you live there must be several similar folk you could reach out to?

Perhaps similar with your family situation and home – clearly you are used to being tough at work but not in control in your own home, which has to be frustrating. How about taking a chance and turning down one request or stipulating that one evening a week, no TV/news.

Likewise at work – take a chance and turn down one of the requests for extra work, same as you have mentioned your colleagues do. There’s an excellent book, Road Less Travelled, where the guy describes this situation really well – eventually realising he is after all the one choosing to do the extra hours, for a variety of reasons, but his end choice.

Just a few thoughts, hoping you are coping ok – you sounded more than over-loaded.

Curious on your basis for comparison – most project management jobs quoted on popular job search websites will be contract roles – so there’s a premium paid as you have much less job security and rights than perm employees. Plus the advertised rates are usually let’s say on the attractive-side of realty to get CV’s through the door for agencies to then talk them into lower paid roles.

That said, you will find most PM’s have a degree in something. A good PM is a lot more than pencil pushing admin and worth their money in savings on the project.

Sadly, there are a lot of not so good PM’s where I’d entirely agree the workers are the ones which end up making the project happen.

Annoying but apparently true fact of life – job interest is inversely proportional to wage! Unless you happen to really really love accounting ( apols to all the very nice and not dull accountants that I know! )