[Article] 6 Reasons You Still Don't Have That Relationship You Want

BRIANNA WIEST

If there's one conversation topic that infiltrates the lives and brunch tables of every twenty something, thirty something, and hell, maybe even sixty something out there, it's the endless "Why don't I have love" or "Why don't I want it now that I have it" saga.

It seems we're doomed to an endless, insatiable desire for what we don't and can't have, until we do and can have it, then we don't want it again.

When it comes to the relationship you claim to want, the issue is rarely who or what has or hasn't come along, and most often, how you're approaching the whole thing. You already know why it is you have the relationship you want; you're just avoiding vulnerability by pretending you don't. Here, six more reasons you don't have the love you think you want:


You're Not Actually Looking For It
You say you want love, but you're not doing anything to actively facilitate finding it. Go out. Go out a lot. Have friends set you up. Get on dating sites and pay for one of a higher quality if you must. Forget what's cool or chill or the way you "thought you'd find love". There's a difference between chasing it and going out to find it. Online dating and the like isn't for the people who couldn't find it, it's for the people who decided not to settle or give up on searching.

You Want It To Give You Love You Can "Have," Not Love You Can Experience

Basically, you want love for all the wrong reasons. You want the kind of love that makes you magically feel worthy and life-lovey and happy and whole and safe. Those are things you must give to yourself. No person or relationship will be able to. And the longer you go not understanding that, the more you will pass up real love because it couldn't do what love doesn't do anyway.


You're Seeking Only What You've Known

Of all the ways we humans are masochistic little freaks, and this probably takes the cake: we seek what we've known. If what we've known in relationships is mistrust and lies and deceit and heartache, we re-create that again and again because that's our baseline experience. We project what we've known onto what we know. We create what was in what is, simply out of a lack of awareness that the human brain desires comfort and familiarity more than anything else.

 
You're Unwilling To Let Go Of The Idea Of What Love "Should Be"

Let go of the avenue through which it comes, and just focus on it coming. Love could be standing right beside you, but you've overlooked it because it's not a brunette, charming, 6'3", sexy hipster and a Fortune 500 CEO, or the girl next door you always found adorably wife-worthy cute. Don't go seeking the package and then complain when you don't want what's inside the box.


You're Not Cleaning Up Your Side Of The Street

You're not doing the work you need to be doing. Human life is evolutionary, and far beyond just physiological ways. It's the mental and emotional ways we grow that define our lifetimes. That said — we carry the residue of all the ways we haven't fully healed or expanded with us, unless we consciously choose to address it and let it go. Don't fail to clean up your side of the street then sit and wonder what the problem is.


You're Listening To Your Hormones More Often Than Your Heart

You've confused love for the high rush feeling you get, which is just attachment, or liking the idea of something, or sex. Love is a fondness, a deep appreciation, and fully knowing who someone is and loving that person with everything you are. We've been wildly misled to believe love happens in the heart. It happens in the soul. Everything else is transitory.