Two Psychological Reasons Why We're Still Single
Though there are 7.8 billion people to choose from, many of us always find a way to rationalize our singlehood. Either we are too busy, our work is too demanding, we don’t go out much or the was no spark. These reasons may make sense in the short run, in the long run, they lose their value, even to us.
That’s because the problem doesn’t lie with the world or our circumstance, the problem is us.
According to the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. If we’re not single by choice than we may suffer from deep-rooted self-loathing or vanity.
Self-loathing
When we struggle with self-hate or self-loathing we aren’t convinced of our likeability. We find it hard to believe anyone can truly like us for being ourselves.
When we’re approached by someone we deem attractive we lose interest as soon as feelings are reciprocated.
Somewhere in our childhood, we learned that love is earned. And since we don’t feel we did anything to deserve such admiration we are convinced that our admirers don’t know our flaws and imperfections.
So we accuse them of being naïve, delusional, or even desperate.
We believe that our admirers will eventually find out and abandon us, naturally, we run before they “find out”.
When we don’t see ourselves as appropriates people for such attention we may find normal signs of affection like gifts, phone calls even text messages annoying often interpreting these gestures as needy. We may often catch ourselves saying “ I wonder what ulterior motive he/she has or “ they’re trying to buy my love?.
But in reality, all this is only true in our minds.
We are deserving of attention, love, and gifts. And in most cases, our admirers tend to notice everything and see us for what we are: flawed human beings but they don’t hold that against us.
They understand that we all have quirks. We may chew loudly, be mean at times, lazy at other- so is everyone else.
It’s not that they don’t notice our flaws and quirks it’s that they came to terms with their own. So they understand that a person can be imperfect and still be loved.
Vanity
A deep feeling of vanity and grandiose most certainly stemmed from childhood. By well-meaning parents who were trying to build our self-esteem but went a bit overboard. We unintentionally learned not to acknowledge our imperfections, simply because we couldn’t see them.
So we walked around with inflated egos believing anyone would be and should be lucky to have us.
Though we are confident adults and most likely high achievers and perfectionists. We still lack the capacity to introspect and very rarely does anyone highlight to us our flaws.
This makes us forget how humanly flawed we are. We forget how demanding and compulsive we can be. How unfair, vindictive, bitter, and vengeful we sometimes are.
We ONLY see ourselves as “perfect” and expect our potential partner to be perfect too. When we meet people we measure them on a scale of perfection whether physical attributes or character traits.
We meet someone who’s nice- But their nose is big. We don’t consider them
Or they are an electrician- electricians are unsophisticated. No
We meet a shy person- shy people are boring. So no
Their accent is too strong, boobs too big, butt too small, beard too short. The is endless.
We will always find a reason to write people off before getting to know them. Yet there is more to a person than what meets the eye. Our physical form is just a vessel and no has control of their physical attributes.
We can learn to look past it but one has to learn to keep an open mind. For example:
She may be shy but maybe she is talkative around people she knows
They may have a big nose but their eyes are mesmerizing
He may have an unsophisticated career but maybe he has many more talents
This is one of the many examples that show that once we look past the obvious we can eventually come to admire each other, and even develop a fulfilling relationship. Actors Cole Sprouse and Lili Reinhart spoke of their first impressions of each other
“Lili was a tough egg to crack,” Sprouse said of Reinhart. “She’s very shy at first and reserved. I think it was about halfway into the first season she started letting people in truly.”’
Reinhart didn’t exactly fall head-over-heels right away either. “I thought his voice was annoying,” she said. “I was like, ‘That guy’s got an annoying voice.’ And now it’s grown on me, I guess.”
Always keeping an opening mind and giving the benefit of the doubt is the surest way to learn how to love. After all to sustain a relationship one needs to be willing to forgive and be forgiven. To tolerate and be tolerated.
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