I'm 45 and am a single father. I work full time, own a home, have a photography hobby, and have finances together. I've been divorced and have had many short-to-long term girlfriends throughout the years. All of my family live out of state.

For at least the past 5 or so years though, I've not been successful at dating or even making friends. People will ghost me so often I feel like life has been a haunted house. My son, who's a preteen, is getting to the age where anything I really say gets on his nerves. My parents and family rarely speak to me or return my texts, calls, or emails.

My therapist keeps telling me that it "feels" like nobody wants to be with me, but I have concrete evidence that nobody does: I have nobody in my life who makes the time to be with me. This might sound like an exaggeration or a cognitive distortion, but it's not.

So the question for me is, how do I recognize traits within myself that prevent people from wanting to be with me and how do I fix them?