You may have been looking for sometime for the relationship that is right for you and on every failed relationship you wonder why the pattern seems to similarly resemble the last one. Over time you get frustrated and believe that you are destined to remain alone, or settle for someone — 5 Signs You Are Settling For Someone You Like But Don’t Love.
However, on taking a reflective look at your relationships, you may realize the predictable patterns your relationships take and what you can do to remove or reduce the pattern to find a fulfilling relationship.
We often miss these patterns if we don’t take time in self-reflection and self- awareness. However, if you keep attracting the same type of partners it may be time to consider these relationship patterns and what you can do to change them.
Not letting go of childhood wounds
Somewhere along the journey of life, you would have been wounded by the words of a parent or caretaker. In some cases it resonated within our spirit and soul and we never quite outlived this and have gone into adulthood carrying the painful words that wounded our soul.
If it sounds familiar it may be some childhood pain that we are holding on to that can be guarding us from letting go those wounds to explore and experience love.
Consider the painful words that were said to you as a child and if you can still remember it clearly, it means it could have wounded your spirit. Forgiving yourself and your caregiver is a key stage of letting it go.
You are emotionally unavailable
You met someone you believed you loved and as best as you know how, you loved them, yet eventually they walked away from your love to that of another one.
You may have vowed in your heart that you wouldn’t love again or allow someone to hurt you and though you eventually had other relationships, you are not really emotionally present, your heart is so guarded that you don’t allow yourself to feel any emotion, though you desire love.
To experience love, you must first open yourself to love and without doing so, the painful wounds will repeat in relationship patterns. To bring healing you would need to forgive the one who hurt you, forgive yourself for blaming you for the hurt you received and release yourself to give and receive love, knowing that hurt can occur in relationships but committing to working through it.
Your unsupportive beliefs and behavior
Quite often you may say you want love, yet consider your internal self talk “ I will never find someone who is right for me”, “I am destined to be alone” “I will never experience the joy of companionship”. These internal beliefs and behaviours are evident by the partners you may select and disappoint you time and time again that supports these internal beliefs and behaviours. If you truly want to find the person that is right for you, consider your internal thought life process and whether you are having the thoughts supporting this.
Not having a vision for your love life
You may say you want love, but not having a vision for receiving the love, could keep you from realizing the love you need.
Are you ready to accept love? Have you made room for love in your life? What would your life look like with love? What are the adjustments you would need to make in your life for love?
All of these are part of a vision of love. It’s not enough to talk about it, it must be evident in how you go about envisioning your life with it.
I had a friend who believed one day she would get married and even in designing her closet space, it was spacious enough to accommodate the clothes of another person. Needless to say in a short time the available space was being utilized by the person she eventually married!
You may not wish to take such steps, but think about how your life would look like with a partner and if you are ready to receive such.
Not committing to self-growth
So many of us, feel that we must wait for a relationship to grow and become in our purpose in life.
Yet genuine, authentic love requires us to grow in our love for ourselves and then by extension we can offer it to another.
Love and respect for self must precede that in a relationship.
Committing ourselves to our own personal growth path, will ready us to receive love and prepare us to forgive the hurts that even the one who loves us would inflict unintentionally at times.
As Leo Buscaglia stated “If you want to learn to love, then you must start the process of finding out what it is, what qualities make up a loving person and how these are developed.” Take time, put in the work and grow beyond who you are and you will attract the love that you need.”
Sometimes you may think that you are alone in the relational struggles, but we all have been there at one time or another.
Understanding the patterns that keep us locked in repeating old habits, is the key to helping us unlock, release and free ourselves to experience the love we desire.
It will require work, but anything worth having requires effort. So step out and step up, the love you desire is waiting.
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This post was previously published on Medium.
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Photo credit: Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash