The Truth About Whether You're Too Old To Find Love May Scare You
Many people who reach a certain age still single (or single again) wonder if they've reached a cut off point where dating just won't work for them.
pixelheadphoto digitalskillet / Shutterstock Whether you're 35 or 75, the feeling you have gotten to the point where you've missed out on love can cause a loss of hope.
It doesn’t matter if you want to start a family, or whether you’re entering your "golden years" and afraid you’re going to spend them alone, the hopelessness of feeling too old to find love can cause you to become cynical and give up looking.
Am I too old to find love?
Lasting love doesn’t have an age limit, nor does it discriminate based on your weight, where you live, or the events of your past. You can’t go back in time and make changes to the past, but you can change your patterns and create new strategies for love, regardless of your age.
As you grow older, you have the opportunity to experience a more mature love relationship. You're never too old for love, especially when you're willing to focus on what you can change, instead of lamenting on love lost in the past.
Believing you're "too old for love" is a limiting belief.
Don’t let fear and limiting beliefs stop you from discovering the joys of sharing your life with an ideal partner. Instead of focusing on your age and the passing of time, try a new approach.
Your belief system has the biggest effect on your ability to create the lasting love you want. When your limiting beliefs are tied up in something you have no control over, you can feel powerless to do anything about it. This ultimately creates apathy, which kills your motivation and joy.
Your self beliefs have tremendous power over what you experience and how you perceive the experiences. Confirmation bias has a profound effect on how you interpret the events of your life. The belief you are too old for love sets up a barricade you'll have to break down before you can begin to create the love you desire.
These common limiting beliefs about love keep you stuck and block you from creating what you desire:
- "All the good ones are taken."
- "Love is not meant for me."
- "Dating is scary."
- "I’ll end up all alone."
- "I’m not good enough."
First comes the false limiting belief. Then, when something negative happens, you have the confirmation of your belief. Your subconscious starts looking for further evidence to confirm the limitation, which is easy to find, and you begin to feel hopeless.
You create a cycle of belief and evidence that leads you on a downward spiral where the only option is to just give up altogether on your search for lasting love.
Then maybe you avoid your negative feelings by putting all of your focus on your career, your friends, or your health.
Don’t let false beliefs stop you from taking the necessary actions to get out of your own way
Your beliefs aren't set in stone. If you are open, you can always find evidence that convinces you to change your mind. A curious mind is a youthful mind.
Start by looking for evidence of what you desire out in the world. Find people your age who are happy and fulfilled with a thriving, loving partnership. You can look in your own community of friends and co-workers, or out in the world online or through other media.
When you find the evidence you’re looking for, celebrate it. Highlight it for yourself, so you start to give it weight and importance. This can be as simple as seeing an older couple holding hands as they cross the street. Or celebrating a milestone anniversary with a couple you're friends with.
Perhaps you can start by asking people you know who have been married for a long time, “What’s your secret?”
When you feel yourself getting sucked back into your old beliefs about being too old for love, say to yourself, “Cancel, cancel, cancel!” Instead, reaffirm that love doesn’t have an age limit, and recall an account about someone you know who discovered love late in life.
Over time, you can train your mind to see this new reality. In turn, this will cause your subconscious to highlight more evidence that the love you seek is available to you.
You are never too old for love, you simply need to upgrade your belief system to allow love in.
One of the most common reasons to believe you are too old for love is your past experiences.
Whether you’ve struggled to connect with anyone in a meaningful way, or whether you have a checkered past of relationship trainwrecks, you can change your patterns and strategies for love. When your past experiences have an emotional charge, they exert a strong influence on your behavior.
For example, your spouse cheated on you and you felt crushed from the experience. Moving forward, you’ll want to avoid ever feeling that level of betrayal again. So, you build a wall around your heart and do whatever you can to avoid dating potential cheaters.
With this example, your subconscious mind begins highlighting any behavior that could be a red flag. You may even take on the belief everyone cheats and no one can be trusted to be faithful.
This may seem like an extreme response, but it's a common reaction to heartbreak and disappointment. This is how people treat love differently than everything else they desire in life.
You have complete control over what you think, feel, and do. Becoming a master of your emotional life allows you to change the trajectory of your experiences. Rather than looking for what you do not want to avoid it, release the past by focusing on what you truly desire.
Manifesting your ideal relationship is possible at every age and stage of life.
The key to opening your heart is to learn from past experiences and develop new strategies for creating love. Adopt a mindset where your experiences are here to teach you and encourage you to grow.
You're not responsible for the behavior of others, but you are responsible for your reaction and for the meaning you assign to your experiences.
Whether it was your parents or your exes, you can heal and let go of the past and allow your heart to stay open. Forgive yourself for your mistakes, forgive others for their behavior, and expand your capacity for love.
Keeping an open heart will allow you to create love in your life, no matter your age.
You're not too old for love. You've allowed your past to cloud you from the truth: Love is always available to you, because the love you seek is inside of you.
You developed your relationship strategies in your childhood based on the influence of your parents and your family. Unless your family dynamic was loving and supportive, you probably didn’t develop the best strategies for your romantic relationships.
Controlling behaviors, a lack of boundaries, taking too much or not enough responsibility, and being unable to resolve conflict are some of the strategies that will sabotage your relationships.
Don’t let the past determine your outcome or deter you from your desired goal for lasting love.
You can always change the way you approach love.
Take a new approach to dating by looking for reasons to say, “Yes,” to a first meet. Slow down the dating process by taking your time before you agree to exclusivity. Make sure you get to know who someone is before you give them your heart.
Utilize the dating process to practice your new strategies and skillset. Communicate authentically and take responsibility for your behavior. Focus on “I” language and avoid “you” language and blaming when you are having a conflict.
Setting clear boundaries will drive away those who want to control and manipulate you. They will literally deselect themselves, because they will see you're not the kind of person they can exert power over.
Develop empathy and compassion for yourself and your partner, and you’ll find you won’t get as triggered or upset when something bad happens. Accepting you are perfectly imperfect will help release a lot of the judgment you may feel about yourself.
Notice when you're projecting your fears and insecurities onto your partner and making up a story about what you think might be going on. Stay open and curious about your partner and their motivations.
Love doesn’t have an expiration date.
In fact, as you get older, you can experience a more mature and fulfilling experience of love. That is, if you make the effort to examine your limiting beliefs, learn from your past experiences, and develop new strategies for lasting love.
You're not too old for love as long as you can still change your approach.
Orna and Matthew Walters are dating coaches and founders of Creating Love On Purpose with a holistic approach to transforming hidden blocks to love, and the authors of Getting It Right This Time.