No one is putting a bigger hurdle in your way of finding love than you are.
I need you to get up, walk to that ginormous bolder and push it aside. Be it jealousy, envy, insecurity, your weight, your ex, your past relationships etc. You have to get rid of it once and for all. Look around you, love is meant for everyone. Even you, and you can get to it, the minute you get out of your own way.
If you’re like me, you know what you want being in a relationship to feel like. We all think we’ll know that feeling the minute it hits us but like many other emotions it’s an ebb and flow we can never control.
One day you really like someone, the next you think you can do better, the next you can’t live without them (they’re so sweet) a moment later you’re plotting an exit strategy.
Why do we do this to ourselves? Why do interrupt the flow of our love lives like a movie we can’t stop asking questions about. As much as we want to enjoy what’s happening we can’t help but anxiously await what will happen next. We want to know what will happen to us and the fact that we don’t is downright scary.
We keep wondering;
“Who is that?”
“What are they doing?”
“Why are they here?”
“What’s happening now?”
with no one but our intuition to put its finger to it’s lips and say “SHH! Just watch what happens!”
That thing that you think is keeping you single is all in your mind. It started with a thought, a theory actually. Maybe as a quest to find the answer to the question we all ask ourselves but try to pretend that we’re not really asking.
Why would anyone want to be in a relationship with me?
Being single reinforces as much insecurity as being in a relationship validates. When someone likes us, it means we were right about what we thought was so wonderful about us and but when we’re single it’s being right about the things that someone wouldn’t like. When we are unsure about how a person feels about us, our minds race to a solution. How does anyone ever sleep?
While we know in the back of our minds there is a peaceful bliss somewhere between infatuation and love where you never ask those questions. Where everything you do is right and your partner couldn’t be happier to be with you. You spend days thinking up baby names and nights looking at pictures of them on Facebook. It’s all so sweet.
But you can’t get to that place because that cinderblock of a “issue” that I asked you to remove from your life earlier is still there, prompting you to doubt, wonder, stew, brood and most of all worry over things that are beyond your control.
So if you haven’t gotten up yet, but you are thinking about it, there is a way to remove this ever-present obstruction. (The one that is keeping you and happiness apart)
A day ago I might have advised that you forget about the nagging pains of insecurity and just put yourself out there. If you meet someone, give them a call. Why wait? If you’re wondering what your potential future spouse is doing, just ask.
I might have advised that you do for other people; everything that you would want someone to do for you but that doesn’t work.
Because they’re not you.
So what should you do?
Calm down
My ex boyfriend used to tell me, “Babe, it’s not that serious.” He was a liar, a cheater and gay but he had a point. It wasn’t that serious because whatever it was that I was afraid was going to happen, I was going to have to deal with it. If we were going to breakup, it’s not like I could pretend it didn’t happen. There was no avoiding what was going to happen so stressing out about it was useless.
The not knowing is intense and when you’re single you can’t help but think, “Where are they?”
Where is the wonderful person that is going to love you and tell you when you look great? Accompany you to work functions and bring you soup when you’re sick?
The worry, the stress, the sadness, the loneliness is going to come, just don’t freak out when it does. Let it run its course then go back to accepting life for what it is. Pretty awesome!
Stop doing the most
I always advocate taking control of your dating life but that also includes knowing when to take a step back. I am a firm believer in playing hard to get. I used to think that when I liked a guy I shouldn’t “play games” but it wasn’t so much as game as it was a way to have patience and stay calm.
Going out every night of the week, hitting on guy after guy, accepting dates that I don’t want to go on with people I don’t really care about becomes increasingly overwhelming. No matter how much effort I gave there were times I knew, I was getting no closer to finding a man than sitting at home in my pajamas.
Timing plays a part but you have to work smarter not harder. It’s likely that you’ve already met great potential partners. Take time cultivating current relationships instead of building new ones. Strengthen what you already have and embrace the love that’s already in your life.
It might sound unlike me but it’s okay to stop looking for love, for answers, for the cure, now and then.
Be optimistic
Thinking positively does not mean being naïve. There are millions of people in the world who don’t worry about what others will think of them, strive to be one of those people.
I wish I could go back in time and change every moment I went on a date thinking this guy is out of my league. I wish I could relive meeting every good-looking guy that I wanted to call me and enjoy the moment for what it could have been a great opportunity instead of the way I treated it which was nerve-wracking.
You can’t get those moments, when you let your insecurities dictate you perspective, back. Being self-aware and realistic are crucial but if you don’t say to yourself, ‘this person wants to date me, because I have a lot of offer,’ then you’ll never succeed.
As difficult as it might seem, especially if you’ve never been lucky in love, you have to maintain the exciting, anticipation of dating. You have to stop bracing yourself for the worst and appreciate all that is happening in your life… period.