If you haven't found the love of your life, there may be good reasons.  Learn about what the barriers might be for you, and what to do about them.  Starting with the barriers:

1. Your past relationships were terrible, so you don’t want to repeat them.

2. Your parents’ relationship is/was terrible, and you don’t want to repeat theirs.

3. Vulnerability in your own relationship with your parents was met with abandonment, shame, manipulation, boundary crossing, rejection, unpredictability….so you don’t feel safe being as vulnerable as a relationship requires.

4. You expect to know immediately whether or not someone you meet is the love of your life, and that just hasn’t happened, or not for a long time.

5. You keep attracting or being attracted to the same kind of person who you end up being miserable with.

6. You ignore warnings from your head, heart, or friends about your romantic choices.

7. You think you’re unlovable or unattractive.

8. You don’t give yourself any opportunities to meet a potential mate, and/or you’re too scared to take risks required to make it more likely to happen.

9. You don’t trust yourself to create and enforce your personal boundaries, so feel unsafe inviting anyone in close.

10. You’re so sure you will fail that you don’t dare try attracting someone.

11. You feel too depressed to take action.

12. You're terrified of rejection, because you think it will devastate you.

13. Rejection causes you to believe that your lack of lovability or lack of attractiveness or worth is being found and confirmed.

14. You don’t understand yourself enough to know who is a good partner for you, so you don’t trust yourself to choose well.

15. You don’t have the relationship skills to create a happy relationship.

16. You don’t know what a happy relationship looks or feels like—you’ve never even seen one, much less been in one.

17. You’re not good company for yourself.

18. You’re so desperate not to be single that people feel your desperation and interpret your positive energy toward them as an attempt to use them to fill a need rather than as a real interest in them.

19. You don’t pursue a friendly connection (at least a smile or hello, or a conversation when possible) with virtually everyone you encounter, at least momentarily.

20. You fear commitment.

21. You don’t trust potential mates (all men or all women, etc).

22. You present yourself as different than who you really are.

23. You want a relationship to fill all the other holes in your life.

24. You settle for someone who seems to have the potential to be what you want, but isn’t what you want the way he/she is.

25. You commit to someone before the intoxicating “honeymoon phase” of increased mood-elevating brain chemistry is over.

So what do you do?

Overcoming the Barriers to Finding the Love of Your Life

1. Practice getting the parenting you need (nurturance, protection, unconditional love and acceptance) from yourself (with support from close, non-romantic relationships), so you are not putting the pressure of making up for what your parents didn’t give you onto a partner.

2. In particular, practice comforting yourself in an effective, healthy way in the face of rejection.  Practice doing with yourself what you would do if your child came home from school in tears because s(he)’d been rejected.  Once you trust yourself to survive rejection, you are much more likely to find your match.

3. Practice and learn to trust yourself to make boundaries, so you don't have to fear boundary-crossers.

4. Practice dating yourself, and explore what is fun and appealing about you.

5. Resolve messages you got from your parents that you are not worthy of love, and develop a belief in your lovability and attractiveness.

6. Develop a fulfilling life unrelated to your love life.

7. Figure out and seek what you want; don't just wait for it to find you.

8. Learn what you have to offer a relationship.

9. Look for a mate who can be your best friend, but with passion.

10. Learn how to be real, humble and self-loving at the same time.

11. Expect to get many rejections or dead-ends before finding what you’re looking for.

12. When you find a mate, wait to make any big decisions about the relationship until your "honeymoon" brain chemicals settle back to normal, and you see your mate without the benefit of this natural high that makes it impossible to be objective.  This usually takes between six months and up to two or even three years.

If you are tired of feeling lonely, frustrated with looking for love, and want to resolve your barriers to love, call or email me--let's work on this together.