Many singles who come to see me often start with "I already know everything about dating and relationships and I do not think I need any coaching, all I want is to know how I can find my soul mate".
When we were teenagers and hopelessly romantic we really didn’t care whether someone was right or wrong for us. We were fascinated with the mere idea of being in love. But many years later, hopefully, we’ve all learned that falling in love for all the “wrong" reasons can quickly turn into a nightmare, a broken heart and can bring much pain and sorrow.
There are many wrong reasons why people want to "fall in love".
Loneliness and desperation
We’ve all been here at one time or the other. You miss the closeness of being with someone who will hold you and make you feel special. So when you meet someone, anyone really, even an ex who treated you badly, you think “this is better than nothing". What starts as a lonely act of reaching out to another human being ends up in a complicated and hurtful relationship. There is never a happy ending to a relationship in which you sell yourself off like second hand merchandize.
Distraction from the problems in your life
Some people get into a relationship to avoid dealing with what is going on in their lives. They believe that a relationship will make it all go away or even better bring passion, purpose and excitement into their lives. When the relationship fails to do this, which is usually the case, they end up in the same place they were before - just themselves and their problems. Then when they are single again, they resolve to better their lives they set goals, buy a self help book and even attend a couple of personal development workshops but this only lasts a few weeks, before they start looking for someone and something to distract them from their problems. It's a dance that never ends.
Pressure to get married and have kids
We live in a world where people have an age by which we should be married. So you end up having a relationship just because everyone says you should. One day you wake up to the fact that you are not in love with your partner. Whether the pressure comes from your family, your friends or from your own urgency, making a decision to be with someone because of the pressure you feel is giving away your power and happiness. Is it really worthy it?
Replaying childhood roles
Some of us use relationships to avoid growing up. We look for someone who will take care of us or someone who needs us to be mom or dad. This has nothing to do with one partner being younger or older, but about finding partners who are either too domineering or emotionally immature and who we can depend on or who depend on us. If you are a loving and caring person but find yourself stifled by your partner’s neediness or your partners leave you and immediately marry someone else, then may be you need to look at the kind of choices you make and how they mirror your childhood role.
Starving for sex
We each have our own “I got to get some or else I'll go crazy" limit. When you are so horny especially because you haven’t had sex for a long time, you can talk yourself into having a relationship with just about anyone and can come up with so many “good" reasons why having sex with someone you are not even in love with is okay. There is a high price we pay for being horny and indiscriminate - and the highs price is not just limited to below the waist. As a conscious dater, take note of your "sex-hunger" limit and be more careful as the time approaches to avoid jumping into the sack with the wrong people.
Mistaking sympathy for love
This one was mine and I could easily have earned a PhD in “Love Rescue Missions". It starts out with good intention to "make it up" for someone who has been badly hurt either emotionally, physically or financially and it ends with you feeling guilty for abandoning them too. You find yourself trapped in a relationship with someone who loves and needs you more than you do them. A relationship based on sympathy and guilt - or on the extreme pity - is emotionally and even spiritually unhealthy and will only end up hurting the person you are trying to protect from being hurt.
Lack of wholeness and sense of completeness
If you’ve never had a relationship in which you feel whole and completely fulfilled, it’s time you realized that no man or woman however much they love you will be able to make you whole or complete. Your need for wholeness is really your spiritual hunger. And your need for completeness is your emotional hunger. No one is going to make you happy and fulfilled until you are happy with yourself. What you need is not a relationship but time to discover and love yourself before you can expect someone else to love you.
Relationships can be your greatest source of pain or your greatest teacher, and only you can decide which one.
Before you can find and create a healthy relationship or improve the one you are already in, you must truly get in touch with your loving self. Until you are overflowing with love and just can’t wait to give some of that abundance to someone else, you will continue to attract others who bring you more emptiness, more pain and more disappointment. When you enter into a relationship you are also standing in front of a mirror and your partner is the reflection of yourself. When you dislike or reject what the mirror is reflecting back to you, you become angry with your partner. So before you begin wanting a relationship, ask yourself if you are willing to learn more about yourself as reflected by your partner.
And what exactly would your partner be reflecting back to you?
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