22nd March, 2009
Question
I'm a single man in my early thirties and feeling a bit disillusioned with love. I have been in a few relationships with lovely women throughout the years, but I have never been in love, and have ended up calling time on each relationship.
More often than not, I have let the relationship go on and on because I was enjoying the fact of being in a relationship, got on great with each of the women, and was hoping I would fall in love with them over time. It never happened and I ultimately had to face the music and quit. Although I consider myself reasonably attractive, I never seem to attract anyone I really fancy. Instead I hook up with girls who fancy me, and end up falling into relationships out of boredom and loneliness.
I have now been single for over a year, with nothing on the horizon, and this is really getting me down. All my friends are either married or engaged and it seems the older I get, the harder it becomes to meet anyone single, never mind someone I'm attracted to. I'm afraid that the same thing is going to happen next time around and that I will end up settling for someone because I don't believe it's realistic to hope that I'll find 'THE ONE'. Maybe some people are just not capable of falling in love at all?
Answer
Volumes have been written about it, so I'm not sure I have anything revolutionary to add to the phenomenon of falling in love. I do know something about 'THE ONE'. There isn't one. There are potentially several. Look around you. Friends everywhere have survived broken hearts and found another.
The answer to your dilemma, therefore, lies within. It's not about finding the girl of your dreams. Because falling in love is something we do. It's not that the right girl crosses your path, or fails to. It's about choosing one of the girls who enter your world. That's why the word falling is so deceptive. You don't fall. You jump.
Why don't you jump? I don't know, because we're not even acquainted, let alone on any intimate terms, professional or personal. You know, however, since you're the expert on your own life, as I'm sure you're tired of hearing me say. The answers are there. You just have to dig deep.
Having unrealistic expectations is one of the classical emotional cop-outs. What's missing, in other words, in the girls you've met? What defining quality do they lack? Passivity is another cop-out. What do you mean, for example, when you say that you never seem to attract anyone you fancy? Do you go after her, in dedicated fashion, and get turned down? Or do you mean that the ideal girl never takes you by the throat and says you're hers?
Or is it, as I suspect, that you seem to dodge deep emotional intimacy? It's popular to talk of commitment phobia. It's not avoidance of commitment, however, which bugs men who love and leave. It's not immaturity, or refusal to face responsibilities, or a deep desire to continue playing the field. It's fear of human closeness.
When we love, we're vulnerable, on two fronts. We can be hurt because we dare to want, giving someone else the power to take what we want away, namely themselves. Secondly, falling in love connects us with past psychological pain. All the abandonment, emotional neglect, mismanaged conflict, criticism, failure to praise and insecurities which we suffered when young surface in romantic love. Falling in love connects us with all the good emotions too, of course, like tenderness, kindness, feeling loved, knowing self-worth. But we're talking avoidance here, so I'm emphasising the painful past. If that pain is too powerful to revisit, we avoid passion. And dress that avoidance up in the language of ideal partners who never materialise.
Like I said, you're the expert. You know what lies below the surface. All you need is the courage to explore. Hard work rather than magic is what makes the difference. Think about it.
