almost within reach

this is my first post, i just found this site. i'm feeling so lonely that i too am compelled to write.
i have lots of friends. i have family around who love me. but i am 31 years old and live alone, sleep alone, eat alone. no significant other. i have struggled with this for many years. i have tried to get out there and date more in the past year, and have done so and had some fun, but i am not willing to settle for just anybody just because i'm lonely.
i had finally gotten to feeling pretty happy even though still alone.  
then i met him.
and he is wonderful. he is exactly what i am looking for. i fell in love. the best feeling was the first night i slept in his bed all night and woke up the next day in his arms. in the arms of the man i had been waiting for. the man i had just been dreaming happy dreams about, only for the first time to wake up and have him actually there.
but things aren't going as planned. he's backed off and he has his reasons, they are legit and i don't fault him, it's not about me.
but i am devastated by the loss. it is absolutely killing me to have to let go and return to loneliness.
everyone tells me there are other men, blah blah blah. no honeysuckle. i know there are other people out there, i know what i deserve, i know i know i know. i am open to dating them but what i am trying to say is that it is a cruel trick of fate to allow you to get a taste of something wonderful but only just a taste, and then have to give it back and crawl back into your lonely hole.
i am not looking for advice, i just am hurting so much over the cruelty of life and the feeling that i am destined to be alone. the simple truth is that it was way easier to be alone for a long long time with no prospects than to get this close and think i'd found happiness only to have it ripped away.

I have so been in this boat. I literally had fairy tale recognition. I was living on one coast and having such intense dreams of a man, I felt driven out to look for him. I was in every bar, every all night book store and Home Depot. Then I moved to the other coast. And there he was. I was so scared. I turned him down sthe first time he asked me out. We started dating, moved into together. I never felt so align with fate, the universe, the will of God before. Then he broke up with me. It was messy and prolonged. I tried to hold on. I felt cheated; tricked. I haven't seen him in I guess ten years. I still sometimes feel like I'm in the wrong place; living the wrong life. Just don't settle. A very good friend told me that once. "Never settle." she said "Because you'll always regret it." I wish I had listened to her. Sleep around if you must, but don't marry someone you don't love because you think it's your "last chance". Another person I should have listened to was my grandmother. She once told me "It's the nineties. You don't have to be married to start a family anymore." The whole family was scandalized and laughed like crazy. She didn't have many years left and was on a quest to see as many great-grandchildren as possible, but there was more wisdom buried in her words than even she realized.