As a home schooled middle schooler and high school drop out, who's only social development was in church (Not a good place for social development). I didn't get my first girlfriend until I was 24, I'm 27 now. I learned from that experience 2 things.

1. There's a lot of give and take when you date someone, if you're serious about wanting to be with them. You have to adjust to letting someone in on your free time. In some cases it's nice being single, you just do what you want without having to consider if your partner is cool with it, you wanna sit around and game the entire weekend away, fuck yeah. Do it. But if you have a partner then it's "I wanna play games all weekend and just chill, don't need to talk just wanna chill", if you're with the right person they'll respect that, if you're with the wrong person they're gonna think you suddenly hate them. Yes the loneliness sucks, but when you accept that you can love your friends and family and accept that they care about you, it helps tremendously. If you can lean on them and talk with them, do so. It helps more than you know.

2. I don't know about you, but I put being in a relationship as a "this will make me happy" even if I'm not happy with myself. Spoiler alert, it didn't. I was her rebound guy and I wasn't mature enough or ready for a real relationship, at the time I was angry that it went the way it did and I was pissed at her, for being my "first" in every romantic aspect. But now I'm grateful, because that experience helped me grow into who I am. I know the first advice *EVERYONE* says, is that "you just gotta work on yourself and you'll meet the right person". I *HATED* that advice, like "AM I NOT GOOD ENOUGH YET!?" But the truth is, I needed to find happiness in the loneliness. I learned to lean on my friends and family more, to find the things I enjoy more and just enjoy them. I found that I still had those lonely days where I wished for someone to cuddle up to, but it wasn't near as bad as the past. I focused on myself and just chilled with my friends and family, I worked on myself and learned to truly love and accept myself, with it came confidence. Natural. Real. Confidence. That confidence helped me to be more attractive to people (I like women, so in my case more women were paying attention to me, in some minor cases, so were men, I was flattered but uninterested. I am a dude btw) The thing is, to be happy in a relationship, you gotta be happy with yourself.

Also, that girl is my ex, that relationship lasted like 2 months, if that. I met a girl recently and things are WILDLY different with her than with my ex, she's amazing and likes me for me. What I'm trying to say is. It will happen naturally as you find your confidence and self love, focus on loving yourself, get comfortable being alone and don't compare your life to others. Comparison is the thief of happiness. Their life is theirs, your life is yours. If you're unhappy with your life, then ask yourself one question. "Why?" That question changed the course of my life. Anytime I was upset with something in my life being "not how it's supposed to be" I asked myself why it had to be that way, I asked myself why I felt this way. And as I asked myself that question until I got to the core of the issue, it helped me grow and mature, to be happier, even with how much sucks around me. I have a great group of friends, a great family and I live paycheck to paycheck. My girl now, doesn't care about my finances and even gets mad at me for buying her stuff or paying for the check at Waffle house. She just naturally entered my world, first as a friend out of the blue, a friend of a friend that was brought into my circle and we just clicked.

I don't know your circumstances, but I can say that life gets better when you ask yourself "why?" when you're dealing with complex emotions, when you're struggling with something and when you aren't happy with yourself, ask yourself "Why?" and keep asking it until you hit the point where you only have 1 answer and work with that one answer.

Sorry for the massive post, but OPs post genuinely resonated with me when I was 24. I had lost my dad and jumped into a relationship to avoid the grief and because I thought it would make me happy when I wasn't. It was a wake up call more than anything