If Any Of These 3 Situations Strike A Nerve, You Might Have Trouble In Relationships
Time to move forward to get the love you desire.
Whicdhemein One | Pexels "Why am I still single?" This question haunts even the most confident women. You're not alone. It comes up when you've spent years in and out of failed relationships and you finally reach the point of wanting to give up on love.
If you ask this question as a complaint, like "Why me?" you won't get a satisfactory answer. But if you ask it with an open mind and in the spirit of wanting to know the truth, it can make the difference between finding the love of your life and being alone.
There could be three reasons you're not having success in dating and are still single. One or two might apply, or maybe all three. So, be ruthlessly honest with yourself when you consider them. You may have oversights that make it hard to see the truth of your situation.
If any of these 3 situations strike a nerve, you might have trouble in relationships:
1. You're ambivalent about entering into a committed, intimate relationship
As much as you think you want a partner, you may find it hard to leave your comfort zone of being single. I know you don't think you're comfortable, but we tend to go for what's familiar.
Ambivalence will prevent you from taking the emotional risks necessary to get close enough to a person to love them and let them love you. It will keep you from fully committing to finding a partner and creates all kinds of sneaky ways to ruin your relationships. If left unchallenged, it will keep you falling for unavailable people or with acts of self-sabotage such as drinking too much on a first date, as demonstrated in a 2021 study on love sabotage.
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Ambivalence will make you believe all kinds of excuses and rationalizations as to why you haven't met the right person, and it will keep you in a state of blaming rather than taking responsibility.
2. You make finding a partner more important than finding happiness
It's a cliché but it's true: You can't depend on anything outside of yourself to make you happy. If you tend to be a negative woman who always sees the glass as half empty, nothing is going to change when you find the right person and marry them.
Yes, you might have a few months of intoxication when you are still in the honeymoon stage of the relationship. But soon, as the headiness wears off and you start to see the real person with all their imperfections, you'll no longer be able to get the happiness fix, outlined in a 2020 study. Your negative attitude will creep back in and you'll be stuck feeling miserable again.
3. You don't value yourself enough to set boundaries
Every relationship you enter into requires some form of boundaries. Whether it's your hairdresser, doctor, or mother, there are "rules" implied in any relationship as demonstrated in anthropological research from 1999. If you let people get away with breaking the rules you need to feel safe and loved, you'll end up floundering emotionally and be full of resentment. Boundaries, like discipline, create freedom. If you don't have standards in your relationships, you're at the mercy of someone else's bad behavior.
"Why am I still single?" is a good question to ask yourself and you shouldn't be afraid of the answer. Facing what has been holding you back is the only way to move forward to get the love you desire.
Virginia Clark is a relationship coach with decades of experience. She's the author of It's Never Too Late To Marry: How to Have the Man and the Marriage of Your Dreams.