African nations could all develop well-functioning, corruption-free constitutional democracies, if only people took responsibility for their actions.

I don't accept this analogy. It would take a large number of people acting together to change the African situation. One person acting on their own can do little. But SilasBarta's desire for an active social life only requires action by him. The problem, as he describes it, is that he does not know what to do, that what he has done so far has failed, sometimes catastrophically. But nobody is stealing women from him. Nobody is preventing him doing whatever it is that will work, should he ever discover what that is (although depending on the scale of past catastrophes, he might have to emigrate to another continent to start over). Nobody is to blame.

I'm willing to bet that what works for you

I have been single for all of my 54 years. Make of that what you will.