While some people get lucky in love rather quickly, the rest of us get dragged through the mud a few dozen times. If you’ve been constantly let down in your search for The One, you’ve probably faced a few (or all) of these challenges:
- You find it nearly impossible to let any guy in. There’s nothing wrong having a sense of self-preservation, but if you’ve been hurt a few too many times, the walls you build can get too high for any guy to climb. Being too cautious can make you seem closed off and uninterested, but it’s pretty hard to be open and trusting when you’re afraid of getting let down again.
- You’re always sure you’re going to get screwed over. Because history tends to repeat itself, especially in your life, you’re always low key certain that your new relationship will go down in flames. No matter how good this new guy seems, you’d feel stupid for getting hurt again, so it takes you a really long time to really let him in.
- You’re super negative about dating in general. You’ve become the person who hates on everything to do with relationships, marriages, and happy couples. Even though you know it’s not true, you chose to believe there’s no such thing as a happy relationship or a genuine guy, and you figure you’d be better off forever alone instead.
- You beat yourself up too often. When you’ve been ghosted, cheated on, or simply had a series of failed relationships, it naturally takes a hit on your confidence. Even though you may not have been the problem, you’ll find reasons to believe that you were. You begin to feel like you’re not good enough for certain people, or that you’ll never find the happiness you see other people get so easily (or so it seems).
- You stop wanting to meet anyone. Since meeting someone has typically meant that you’re going to end up being sad, pissed off, and half a bottle deep in the wine, you tend to shy away from meeting anyone new. After all, guys let you down, but Netflix and your dog sure don’t.
- It’s really hard to get excited, even when things are going well. It’s pretty hard to get excited and open up when you’re not exactly used to having excellent luck in dating. What’s the point of getting your hopes up when you’re afraid you’ll end up back at square one again? Getting excited is for people who actually have good luck with guys.
- You start to overthink every little thing. One of the major curses of being burned one too many times is the fact that you start to overthink things in a big way. Even when nothing is going wrong, your mind can start to invent problems that were never there in the first place. While this can look crazy, it’s just an overly cautious defensive response to missing the red flags in the past.
- You have a hard time believing that he’s as nice as he seems. The hard part of dealing with so many losers in the past is that when you do meet a great guy, you have a hard time believing him. It’s not like you want to doubt him, but after all the crappy guys who started off just as nice, you know you can’t be too careful.
