4 Reasons Your Partner's Love Never Feels Like Enough
The lessons you need to learn in order to embrace the way the world sees you.
simona pilolla 2 via Shutterstock Do you have a lingering feeling of dissatisfaction in your relationships and continuously feel the despair of rejection or not feeling good enough in your relationships?
Perhaps you are exhausted by feeling alone.
When you don't know how to love yourself, you find it hard to feel loved in relationships. Love doesn't feel enough. Lacking love within yourself makes you feel unsatisfied with love. You search for more love from others.
Here are four reasons your partner's love is never enough
1. You are trying to find your unmet need for love
For one, suffering abandonment or unmet love from your childhood, as explored in a study by Latasha N. McDowell, University of Central Florida. This can make you internalize the belief that you're not good enough and, subsequently, turn to various partners in the hope they can make you feel good enough.
You yearn for someone to make up for the unmet love but are let down when no one can make up for it. You feel unloved in relationships and want someone else to love you so you can escape these feelings.
2. You overly-romanticize love
The fantasy of romanticized love in a relationship can trap you into chasing that feeling of love, so you ignore any problems or abuse, hoping someone will make up for your unmet needs and give you the love you want.
Well, sadly, this hope keeps getting crushed because no one can take away the pain and suffering for you. So, you're left feeling unloved because love doesn't feel enough. You are left with great longing and an empty heart that is unfulfilled.
This brings us back to point #1, and your search for unmet love continues — outside yourself.
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3. You don't believe anyone can truly love you
When you don't feel you deserve love, you can think your partner does not love you, as suggested by a study led by Dr. Sang Won Lee. You look for evidence to confirm the way you feel about yourself. And no matter how much they reassure you they love you, you don't feel it, so you can push real love away.
But the truth of the matter is no one can make up for that unmet love and give you what you're searching for. You need to heal yourself by finding the love within yourself and meeting your own needs.
You need to be able to say to yourself, "I love myself, and that is enough."
4. You want someone to provide something you can only give yourself — self-love
No one else can give you what you need to provide for yourself.
If you let go of needing something from others because you've healed yourself, you don't need to look outside yourself to feel good enough. Instead, you will be more open to receiving and giving love back in a realistic way.
When love isn't enough, perhaps your hope keeps you from experiencing the kind of love you can give yourself. When you heal yourself, you can become kinder and more loving towards yourself, so your real self will radiate and shine within.
Learning to accept love for yourself will make you feel good enough for someone who is also enough for you.
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When love isn't enough, it is because you don't accept love is possible for yourself. When you feel others caused you to feel unloved, there may be a possibility you're externalizing your feelings so you don't feel them.
Instead of locating your feelings — externally — in loved ones, try to locate them internally and question why you don't love yourself. This allows you to avoid making others responsible for how you feel and take responsibility for sorting your feelings so they do not control you.
This will allow you to embrace who you are and become loved for the real you.
When you love the person you are, you don't need others to fill the void inside you. You can give your relationship what it needs so love feels enough.
When you think you don't deserve love, you will most likely feel you are not good enough for someone else. A study on childhood maltreatment and social functioning by RA Colman and CS Widom demonstrates how you will most likely be searching for someone to fill those unmet needs and make up for past hurts to feel good enough.
Nobody else can change how you feel about yourself
The truth of the matter is no one can change the way you feel about yourself, so you will most likely feel disappointed or let down when love doesn't feel enough.
You will not recognize love if devalue yourself. No matter what your partner says, love will never feel enough. If you don't feel you deserve love, you push real love away so you can't get the love you want.
Nancy Carbone is an author, relationship therapist, and psychodynamic therapist. She specializes in the treatment of personality disorders and relational trauma and is accredited as a mental health social worker.