8 Beliefs Inhibiting Your Search for Love
By: Wendy Miller
Tags: Self Improvement, Dating, Self, Love, Relationships

8 Beliefs Inhibiting Your Search for Love

If you’re struggling to find true love, it might be because you believe one of these.

The search for love can be short and sweet for some and long and arduous for others. While you can’t force love, it is possible to make it harder to find.

One way you might make it harder to find love is by holding on to beliefs that hold you back. The way these beliefs hold you back can vary, but they all stop you from looking for and finding the person of your dreams.

Take a look at these beliefs and see if any of them sound familiar.

I’m unworthy of love

Feeling unworthy of finding love, or having low self-esteem, is a big belief that can stop you from finding real love. When you think you aren’t good enough for love, you won’t find love.

Even worse, you’ll attract people who also believe you aren’t worthy of love. This puts you in relationships where you’ll be cheated on, lied to, and otherwise treated poorly.

Changing your feelings of worth and self-esteem aren’t easy, but it needs to be done if you want to find love. Start by reminding yourself that everyone is worthy of love. Read books on personal growth and development, keep a journal where you work on your thoughts and feelings about yourself, and see a therapist if you need to.

Being single is better

Photo by Eye for Ebony on Unsplash

Being single has some benefits. And for some people, being single really is a better option. They truly don’t want to give up being single for a relationship. They’re content and they thrive as a single person.

But if you want love, you have to be willing to let go of the single life. You need to be willing to sacrifice some of the benefits of being single for some of the benefits of being part of a couple.

If you find yourself struggling with that idea, it might be a good idea to explore why that is. Is it that you really would prefer to be single and are only looking for love because you think you have to? Is there something about being single that you really don’t want to give up?

Maybe you need to consider what kind of love you’re truly looking for. Perhaps you feel single is better because monogamy isn’t appealing to you. In that case, exploring the idea of polyamory may be a better fit for you.

I’ll need to sacrifice too much

On the heels of thinking single is better is the belief that finding love and getting into a relationship means you’ll have to sacrifice too much. Relationships do require sacrifice. They demand compromise and sometimes putting someone else ahead of yourself.

But in a healthy relationship, you should never have to sacrifice too much. You should never be the only one making the sacrifices.

This belief can come from a relationship you’ve been in that was unhealthy and required you to sacrifice too much. It can also come from having seen that example in relationships around you, such as your parents or grandparents.

It can be harder to let go of this belief if you’ve had close experience with it, such as your own relationship or those of people close to you. It may require you to work with a therapist to learn how to set good boundaries, assert yourself, and have a healthy relationship with appropriate sacrifices and compromises.

Everyone’s a cheater

If you’ve been cheated on in the past, particularly if it’s happened more than once, this belief can get embedded in your brain and your heart without you even realizing it. Before you know it, you come to expect everyone to cheat — and that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. And so it becomes easier to assume everyone cheats and give up on finding a faithful, lifelong love.

One thing to remind yourself of when this belief rears it’s head is the most obvious example of its lack of truth: yourself. You are not a cheater, therefore not everyone is a cheater.

It can be difficult to trust after you’ve been cheated on. But if you want to find lasting love, it starts with trust. You need to be able to trust that people you meet are honest, faithful, and good until and unless they give you reason to think otherwise.

Photo by Natalia Barros on Unsplash

A relationship will make me less lonely, happier, etc.

Most of our feelings of loneliness, happiness, satisfaction, etc., come from within us. They don’t come from having a partner. Of course, this isn’t to say that a partner’s absence doesn’t make us feel lonely or that they can’t do something that makes us happy.

But if you’re lonely, unhappy, unsatisfied with your life, before meeting a partner, a relationship won’t change that. It might soothe it for a while, much like running cold water over a burn soothes the pain and heat, but it will come back — just as the pain and heat of the burn returns when you turn off the cold water.

If you’re lonely, unhappy or otherwise unsatisfied, you need to work on that for yourself. You don’t need to be “fixed” before you get into a relationship. But you do need to be able to recognize that a relationship won’t fix it and separate that feeling from the relationship.

All the good guys/girls are already taken

A string of bad relationships, or even a handful of bad first dates, can have you convinced that anyone worth having a relationship with is already in one. But it’s not true. There are always plenty of good, single people out there.

The only way to combat this belief is to keep reminding yourself that one person, one date, one relationship, is not indicative of the quality of people available to date. That one person, one date, one relationship is just proof that that particular individual isn’t right for you.

It also doesn’t hurt to ask those good ones who are taken (or the ones who took them) if they know anyone. Good people tend to surround themselves with other good people, so they can be a great way to meet other single folks who are looking for the same thing you are.

I don’t trust myself to make the right choice in a partner

If you’ve got a long list of bad relationships in your history, it’s understandable you might question your own judgment when it comes to picking a partner. But, just like thinking everyone’s a cheater, not trusting yourself to choose a good partner will lead to choosing the wrong ones.

Learning to trust yourself to make the right choice takes time. It won’t happen overnight, and even when you start to trust yourself, another failed relationship or bad date can have you backsliding and doubting yourself again.

It can also help to make a list of the things you think are important in a partner. When you’re considering someone as a partner, compare them to your list. Do they match pretty closely? If so, even if it’s not a perfect match, give it a shot. If they don’t have any of what you listed, walk away.

I can change someone

This is a belief that keeps us stuck in unhappy relationships. We think if we just invest enough time and effort, we can change someone. We can make them who we want, bring out the potential we see in them, nurture that nugget of greatness to make them a better person.

But think about it for a minute. Have you ever tried to change a bad habit? How hard was it? And that’s you trying to change yourself because you wanted to change. It’s going to be at least twice as hard, if not more, to change someone else — assuming they even want to change in the first place.

You can’t change other people. It’s better to accept that and move on. If you can’t accept someone as they are, they’re not right for you — no harm, no foul. Move on until you find someone you do accept as they are. That’s when you’ll find love.

Beliefs matter

Whether you’re consciously aware of them or they’re beneath the surface, your beliefs matter — especially when it comes to finding love. It’s important to look deeply into yourself and see if you’re holding on to beliefs that are holding you back from the love you seek.

Eliminate those negative beliefs and see what it does to your love life. You might be surprised at the difference it can make.