When You Just Can’t Find the Right Partner
When you just can’t find the right partner, you shouldn’t automatically look to blame those you’ve had failed relationships with. In fact, there are many factors at play here. Most of the time it’s nothing serious and something you can easily overcome.
The first thing you need to know is that everything in life, including romantic love, involves a certain degree of dissatisfaction. Indeed, if you haven’t found your perfect partner, you’re simply one of the majority. The key lies in the word “perfect” as this rarely corresponds to human reality.
You’re not the only person who wishes the world was different. Because everyone longs for that ideal kind of reality where the pieces all fit together and they maintain a perfect balance forever. However, this is an impossible desire. For this reason, if you’re asking yourself the question of why you can’t find the perfect partner….read on. You might find some of the answers here.
“The bird wishes it were a cloud. The cloud wishes it were a bird.”
– Rabindranath Tagore-
The idealization of love
If you can’t find a partner who satisfies you, maybe you need to change your ideas. Because you might have such an idealistic view of love you’ll never find anyone who meets your expectations. In fact, the idealizing of romantic love always involves wholly unrealistic expectations.
Every relationship, just like every job, every friend, and every family member sometimes doesn’t come up to expectations and can result in difficult situations. However, in the same way, you’re also not perfect, even though you may think you are.
In any kind of relationship, the important thing isn’t that there are no negatives but that the positives outweigh them. In this way, you achieve a healthy balance.
Chronic dissatisfaction
Chronic dissatisfaction is a widespread trait in today’s world. Everyone is urged to want more, have more, and be more, rather than just being happy the way they are with what they have. Sometimes, this can be a good thing, as it encourages personal growth.
However, dissatisfaction with everything can become a force that stops you in your tracks. It comes from a feeling of insecurity or lack of self-worth (self-esteem). Then without even realizing it, you project your dissatisfaction onto your partner. That’s why your relationship can’t move forward.
If you’re depressed, you’ll never find a partner to satisfy you
Depression has many faces. It doesn’t always present itself as sadness, disinterest, and low energy. In fact, if you can’t find a partner to satisfy you, it could be because your mood isn’t allowing you to appreciate the positive qualities of others.
As a matter of fact, a depressed person is really limited when it comes to love. Furthermore, if it’s a covert kind of depression, it manifests itself in the feeling that it’s impossible to feel any real interest in anything, not just people. On the other hand, there’s the “smiling depression” where people have strong ambition and a lot of energy, but find it really difficult to enjoy life.
Not wanting to grow
If you can’t find a partner who satisfies you, perhaps, deep down you don’t really want to keep growing. Teenagers often feel this way. Because they think of themselves as both independent adults and lost children. In fact, if they don’t successfully complete this life stage, it often returns later in the form of unrealistic and impossible expectations concerning love and romantic partners.
For example, in these kinds of cases, the individual may expect to be offered an unconditional kind of love. In fact, what they actually want is to be taken care of in the same way their mother or father used to do. That’s the only kind of love that would satisfy them. Since the partner can’t offer this, they’re discarded as not being the right person. This pattern of behavior subsequently repeats itself over and over with other prospective partners.
External pressures
Some environments make demands that nobody can meet. These kinds of environments form models or ideals of partners and wait for them to emerge. This often happens in families. However, it can also occur at work, in ethnic groups, social classes, etc. Under these conditions, no partner is ever good enough because they don’t conform to that extreme ideal. As a matter of fact, in these cases, it’s not a partner that’s required, but a “profile” that fits the established criteria.
Finally, if you can’t find a partner to satisfy you, just stop for a moment and ask yourself what’s happening. That’s because, thanks to your unrealistic fantasies, you might be depriving yourself of some very valuable experiences. Furthermore, you might be unknowingly trapped by your own personal limitations.
All cited sources were thoroughly reviewed by our team to ensure their quality, reliability, currency, and validity. The bibliography of this article was considered reliable and of academic or scientific accuracy.
Rivera, D., Cruz, C., & Muñoz, C. (2011). Satisfacción en las relaciones de pareja en la adultez emergente: el rol del apego, la intimidad y la depresión. Terapia psicológica, 29(1), 77-83.
