Isabella Chase
Dating can be difficult, to say the least. As someone who’s recently entered the dating pool again, I can attest to how complicated the process is.
It truly does feel like looking for a needle in a haystack.
But you know what? I’m a firm believer that if you don’t give up, you’ll eventually get there.
By that same logic, it makes sense that if you keep putting yourself out there and working on yourself, you will find real love at one point or another.
Unfortunately, some women struggle to do precisely that. They huddle in their comfort zones, too afraid of rejection or disappointment, and as a result, they completely eradicate their chances of meeting the love of their lives.
These are the 7 habits they share.
1) They don’t put themselves out there
One of my dear friends has been dreaming up her ideal boyfriend for years now. She is in her mid-twenties and has never been in a relationship.
“What’s keeping her back?” you may ask. “What’s the reason she’s still single?”
It’s not that she doesn’t want a relationship. She isn’t shy or withdrawn or socially awkward, either. In fact, she’s one of the friendliest and most extroverted people I know.
It’s that she struggles to make the first step toward active dating. She doesn’t use dating apps; doesn’t approach people in public; doesn’t hold eye contact when she fancies someone in the library or a café.
In other words, she isn’t putting herself out there.
“I just wish someone approached me and started speaking to me,” she sighs sometimes.
While I understand her frustration – technology has made it so that we rarely strike up conversations with strangers, decreasing our chances of stumbling upon true love out there in the wild – I also keep telling her that unless she takes dating seriously, she might end up waiting for a very long time.
Love doesn’t just fall in your lap. Sometimes, you’ve got to work for it.
2) They don’t make space for love in their lives
When I got over my most recent breakup and entered the dating scene again, I realized just how time-consuming the whole ordeal was.
If you use dating apps as a woman, the process goes a bit like this:
- You swipe for half an hour and get a small pool of matches
- Half of your matches stop replying, say crude or creepy things, or turn out to be fake profiles
- A quarter of your matches don’t take the initiative to ask you out or send very dry messages
- A few real and nice people ask you out
- You go on a date and perhaps fancy some of them
- If you’re lucky, the men you fancy are also emotionally mature, intelligent, and have values that align with yours
- If you’re not so lucky, back onto the dating apps you go
Yep. It’s not easy.
However, I also know plenty of women who have found their spouses on dating apps and lead wonderful married lives thanks to their perseverance.
Plus, the process can be quite fun if you stop taking it that seriously. I mean, even if you don’t fancy or get along with someone, at least you had an interesting experience that you got to dress up for, right?
Personally, I try to make the time to arrange at least a few dates every month and check my dating apps for ten minutes or so every day.
If you want to find real love, you’ve got to invest some time and energy into working towards it. This applies even if you don’t use dating apps – in that case, challenge yourself to ask someone out a couple of times a month.
3) They engage in negative self-talk
If you want to find healthy and long-lasting love, you first have to believe that you are worthy of it.
Unfortunately, many women engage in negative self-talk that leads them down the rabbit hole of self-loathing and self-doubt, which in turn makes it very difficult for them to show up as their confident selves in the realm of dating.
“Ugh, I’m so X. I’ll never find anyone.”
“Why would anyone pick me? Look at my *insecurity*!”
“I’m not easy to love. Dating’s too hard.”
Here’s something you may not have known: your brain is wired to go down familiar neural paths, which means that the more negative thoughts you spin, the more likely you are to think them in the future.
Not only that but you might subconsciously try to adjust your behavior so that it is in line with your beliefs, which means you could potentially sabotage your whole dating journey just to confirm to yourself that your negative thoughts were right all along.
Thus the magic of self-fulfilling prophecies.
Positive affirmations may sound like spiritual nonsense, but due to what I’ve just described above, they actually work.
If you find and create positive affirmations tailored to your specific needs, you might grow in confidence and slowly but surely stop with the self-sabotage.
4) They operate from a fear-based mindset
“What if I go on a date with someone just to get disappointed?”
“What if I like someone and get rejected?”
“What if I never find anyone and end up all alone for the rest of my life?”
What these three thoughts have in common is that they are all grounded in fear.
Unfortunately, fear doesn’t make for a good long-term motivator.
It makes you attach to the wrong people just because you’re afraid of singledom, avoid dating because you’d rather not try than try and get rejected, and immediately cut off potential dates just because you’re worried they will be just like your ex.
Look, I know what it feels like. I’ve been there.
But then I embraced singledom, my career, and my friendships, and I realized that dating was only the cherry on top.
If I find love, that’s great! But if I don’t, I can achieve happiness without it just fine.
This mindset essentially sets me up for success. I never lose anything because I love my life as it is.
And if I try and fail, so what? At least I can say I gave it a shot.
5) They give up easily
The issue with dating is that it is extremely rare to find the love of your life on the first try.
Not that it doesn’t happen, of course, but most of us go through a couple of relationships before we settle on “the one”.
This basically means that you’ve got to be very resilient and optimistic if you want to get to your final destination. Heartbreak after heartbreak, you’ve got to muster enough hope to give it another try.
And another.
Fortunately, humans are extremely adaptable. Time (and self-reflection) truly does heal wounds, and if you refuse to give up and continue to put yourself out there, you will eventually get there – whatever “there” means for you.
I like to say that the only failure that exists in life is the decision to stop trying. The same applies to romance.
6) They get stuck in unhelpful echo chambers on social media
Here’s my gripe with social media: it is made to catch and hold your attention, not to improve your well-being.
This means that if the oh-so-mighty algorithm realizes you react strongly to content that criticizes dating, relationships, and marriage, it may continue to send that content your way.
Before you know it, you’re stuck in a loop of rage, disgust, contempt, and an overwhelming sense of hopelessness.
After my most recent breakup, this is exactly what happened. But then I made an active effort to seek content that offered me hope, that provided me with helpful advice and guidance, and that increased my optimism and faith.
I am now more likely to go on dates and hold onto the faith that I will one day find someone who is compatible with me because I no longer consume content that tries to prove me otherwise.
My mental health is also doing much better.
7) They don’t believe they deserve their happy ending
Stephen Chbosky once wrote, “We accept the love we think we deserve.”
If you spend your time feeling lonely and dreaming of the perfect love life but never find it within yourself to actively seek it, it may be that you secretly don’t think you are worthy of it.
If you find this may be the case, ask yourself why. Journal about it. Read up on self-sabotage (I recommend The Mountain Is You by Brianna Wiest), look at your past, and untangle your thoughts on the matter.
You do deserve a happy ending. You deserve to be loved and taken care of; cherished and appreciated; valued and committed to.
But no matter how many times I tell you that, you probably still won’t believe me. And that’s because this belief has to come from within yourself.
It *is* somewhere in there. You’ve just got to make the effort to look for it.
