Do you ever get that feeling like everyone around you is in a happy relationship and you’re the only one still single? Like everyone around you enjoys the charms of true love except you?
You’re not alone. Feeling like a failure at love has become an epidemic and more and more people feel this way for some unknown reasons, or for some maybe not-so-unknown reasons.
In my circle of friends, this epidemic called ‘failing at love’ has taken a heavy toll.
The other day, when I was talking to one of my girls, she seemed totally devastated because she was convinced that she’s the ultimate failure at love just because everyone around her has someone and she’s flying solo (after a few heartbreaks).
She is convinced that she’s a failure at love because her best friends enjoy the company of their loved ones, because they’ve found that one person who means the world to them. And do you know what I said to her?
I told her: How in the world does this make you a failure at love? How can you fail at something that doesn’t have a grading system, a speed limit or an expiration date?
Just because you still haven’t found the kind of love that is right for you, this doesn’t mean that you fail at love.
Just because your past relationships didn’t work out, this doesn’t classify you into the category of ‘being a love failure’.
As I was saying this with the confidence of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, she was looking at me in disbelief, like I had just invented something new that she had been totally ignorant of all this time.
But I hadn’t. This is the only truth!
The only truth is that you cannot fail at love because love isn’t something you can ‘fail’ at!
As you’re listening to other people’s fairy tale love stories, you naturally get the feeling like you’re missing something big, something that hasn’t found you yet or never will. You get convinced that you will be forever alone or that you’ll keep jumping from one failed relationship to another.
But other people’s love lives aren’t something you should reflect on in the first place.
All those cute pictures of happy couples on social media aren’t something that should cause you dissatisfaction or this feeling of hopelessness regarding your own love life.
Why?
Because you experience and build your own love life at your own unique pace. Every single individual of the 7.8 billion current world population has different romantic challenges and a different relationship timeline.
And just because some of them have found their special one sooner, this doesn’t make you a failure at love!
Some people need more time, more challenges to overcome and more patience. There’s no need to think that you’re the one to blame for your past failed relationships.
Relationships fail for many reasons and this has nothing to do with you being doomed or less lucky than the rest of the population.
This has nothing to do with you feeling like a failure at love because your time to shine and bear the fruits of love is yet to come.
Just because it didn’t happen yesterday or today, it doesn’t mean that it won’t. Where you are at this moment is exactly where you should be.
All the challenges you had to deal with are a part of your journey called life and a part of the lessons that you needed to learn in order to become stronger, wiser and happier in the future.
Love is not something you can buy in a store. Love is not something instant.
Love isn’t a game.
Love isn’t a game of Tetris where you have to match all the tiles in a video game called love in order to feel like a winner.
Love isn’t The Bachelor TV show where you have to compete with others in order to enjoy the perfect love. Perfect love doesn’t exist and a perfect person doesn’t exist.
Love isn’t a game where you need to play all the right cards in order to attract it into your world.
Love isn’t something you can really influence and therefore, it cannot make you a failure and you shouldn’t stress about it.
As human beings, we are born with the love instinct from our mothers and we carry that instinct through our entire lives.
We search for that special flame that will ignite the fire of love in our souls.
It comes naturally to us to search for the One.
The One who will change our perspective on things, challenge us and make our world greater, richer.
We’re convinced that love is exactly what we’re missing at that moment and the only thing that can make us feel better.
And that’s why we feel so sad when we’re unable to achieve it. That’s why we start feeling like we fail at this game called love.
But love isn’t a game. It’s not something that requires learning special skills or possessing a special code that will enter us into the world of unconditional love.
Love is not something you should rush to.
Because love isn’t a race.
Love doesn’t have a finish line where you have to win first place. Love doesn’t know the meaning of these two words ‘successful people’ and ‘failures at love’.
Those who have already found their special one are not the ones chosen by love. They just happened to find it sooner than others, which doesn’t make them more successful or luckier.
Therefore, you cannot fail at love because love isn’t a race where you should find someone ASAP only to fit the norms of society.
Love isn’t something you should rush to, because you can’t, even if you wanted to.
Love is about the journey. Love consists of all of your past moments and your present moments that are connected to your future moments.
Love is an omnipresent force that cannot be chased.
Love is life’s changes, laughter, tears… Every time you were disappointed in love and feeling like a failure, love was still there with you, holding your hand and whispering into your ear that you shouldn’t feel this way because love is not something you can influence.
Love is something you experience. Love is something you experience from the depth of your heart and not from the outside.
Because love isn’t about the number of likes or comments on social media.
Love is not about romantic selfies that will bring you tons of likes or comments on your social media. Those couples that you envy so much because they look perfect in every picture don’t have a perfect life or perfect love.
Just like you, they have their everyday concerns, obligations and especially love obligations toward their partner’s needs, dreams and desires.
Love isn’t about having comments like “OMG you look super cute together!” underneath your pictures on social media. Because love is not something shareable, likable, Tweetable, etc. The number of likes on your pictures is not a measure of love.
And that’s why you shouldn’t rush to it. You shouldn’t rush to it for the wrong reasons. And you shouldn’t feel like a failure just because you have no one to take a romantic selfie with so that you can share it with other people.
Love is not something that will mysteriously appear out of nowhere when we pick up our phone and start dialing in the hope that we’ll get some answers for it being late.
You cannot order love to appear in your life because love will not come to you until the time is right. You cannot fail at love just because it hasn’t found you yet.
Love is not a game or a race. Love isn’t about the number of likes or comments on social media.
Love comes within you. Love is real.
You cannot fail at love just because you couldn’t create something meaningful with your previous partner(s).
There isn’t a special formula that you need to learn in order to do everything right so that your love can keep existing.
Just because it didn’t work out with your previous partners, this doesn’t make you a failure. Just because you don’t have an arsenal of cute photos with a partner to share your love with others on social media, this doesn’t make you a failure.
Just because you need more time to find your special one, this doesn’t make you a failure.
Because love cannot be forced, it cannot be shared on social media and it cannot be rushed.
Love comes within you and whatever comes within you, it cannot be forced. It can only be left to develop at its own pace.
Love is a powerful emotion and just because you haven’t felt it yet, this doesn’t make you a failure!
Love is real and sensitive like a summer breeze. It’s both powerful and fragile at the same time and it cannot be tamed. It cannot be chased and it cannot be bought.
Finding a perfect partner is not a definition of love and therefore this cannot make you unsuitable to love or incapable of loving.
Love is so much more than that! It’s a complex emotion that consists of so many layers still unknown to many of us.
Love is in the color of a bright blue sky, love is in a beautiful flower, love is in a cute kitten that’s crying for her mother’s milk, love is in all the nice things we do for others, love is in our hearts.
So, if you love the world and everyone around you, how can you even be a failure at love? Well, you can’t!
If you wake up every day with a smile on your face because you’re grateful for everything you already have, then you’re sure as hell a winner at love!
If you live your life with passion, compassion and hope, even though you were disappointed by life and love multiple times, then you’re sure as hell a winner at love!
If you notice and worship all those little things that many people unconsciously neglect, then you’re sure as hell a winner at love!
You cannot fail at love if love already lives within you and if it’s deeply rooted in your heart. You just need to nourish it and when the right time comes, this love will flourish into something even bigger and greater.
But this all stems from your initial perspective on love.
If you believe that one day you will find that unconditional love everybody is talking about, then you sure as hell will!
If you believe that you won’t and if you keep telling yourself and others that you’re the ultimate failure at love, then love will be confused about you.
It will think that you’re not ready for it yet and that’s why you will have to wait a little bit longer to be ready to welcome it into your life.
The ability to love starts with the ability to love life. The ability to love others starts with the ability to love one’s self.
We often think that finding love will make us complete and if we haven’t found it yet, we feel incomplete, sad and like we’re missing something big out there.
This is true but to a certain extent. Finding love will make you complete to a certain degree only if you succeed in finding yourself beforehand.
Everything stems from self-love or the lack of it. Thinking that you fail at love also stems from a lack of self-love and that’s why it’s important that you first focus on learning how to love yourself instead of others. Now, how does one love themselves?
Loving yourself means accepting yourself for who you really are, with all of your quirks, flaws, good sides and bad sides that come in a package. Loving yourself means being aware of the fact that you’re imperfect and being perfectly okay with that.
Loving yourself means not blaming yourself for all the past relationships that simply didn’t succeed, not blaming yourself for not meeting your soulmate yet and not blaming yourself for cruising solo.
Loving yourself also means not giving a damn about what other people think.
Just because others are in a relationship and just because some of them are telling you that you should start doing something about your love life as well, this doesn’t mean that you should listen to them.
This doesn’t mean that you should feel less worthy or incapable of finding or fighting for real love.
Because one day, at one moment, when you least expect it, you will meet the love you’ve been waiting for!
And before that happens, you need to focus on yourself and learning how to love yourself no matter what.
When you master this, you will be able to love another human being with all of your body, mind, and heart—unconditionally.
If you love yourself, you cannot be a failure at love!
Loving yourself is the ultimate expression of love, the most powerful of all. If you love yourself, then there’s nothing you should worry about because you’re doing everything right.
You’re on the right path toward meeting your soulmate, your special one, and there’s no need to hurry because there’s not a chance that you will miss it!
Loving yourself means that you’re ready to receive unconditional love from the One and it’s only a matter of time when true love will knock at your door and greet you with lots of blessings and a big smile.
You cannot be a failure at love if you know how to appreciate and respect yourself because that kind of love is the hardest to learn.
So, take a deep breath and see the truth!
Open your eyes and accept the fact that love is your birthright and therefore, you cannot fail at it even if you wanted to!
Love is something that was born within you the moment your heart started beating inside your mother’s belly. You were born out of love and therefore, it’s a part of you.
It’s a part of your every pore, every smile and every tear.
Even though our bodies consist of up to 60% liquid called water, love is what initially brought us into the world and filled our bodies with 100% pure love.
And pure love is the most powerful force in the universe! Pure love is a part of us. Pure love is our birthright.
So, to fail at something that’s already a part of you is quite impossible. You cannot fail at being who you are. You cannot fail at existing.
With your every step, your every word and action, you share love around you without even being aware of it.
You create love in many different forms that make you who you are today. And all these forms will one day combine into one big, unconditional form and all you need to do is wait and believe that it is so!
No matter what you’ve been through, your ability to love always remains.
And all you need to do is unlock it! No matter how disappointed you are in love and relationships due to your past heartbreaks and painful experiences, this doesn’t mean that you’ve lost the ability to love or that you’ll wear the title of being a failure at love for the rest of your life.
You won’t!
Your ability to love is still there within you and all you need to do is look for it, unlock it and praise it. Because no matter what you’ve been through, your ability to love always remains.
What you’ve been through before is not a measure of love and it has nothing to do with it.
To discover love’s full potential, you need to find the right one for you because finding the right one means unlocking real love!
And that’s why you should never rush into it. That’s why you should wait patiently and with the hope that real love will find you because it will.
It will find you when you least expect it and when you become ready for it.
And when it does, believe me, you’ll know it.
You’ll know it because you’ll feel like you’re living on a different, exciting planet that all this time was waiting for you to visit it.
You’ll know it because all of your tears will be replaced with pure laughter, hugs and kisses.
You will no longer worry about being a failure at love because you will realize that this concept doesn’t exist.
You will realize how mistaken you were all this time for believing that you’re an outcast and that love has forsaken you.
When real love finds you, you will know it because suddenly, everything that happened to you in the past will start making sense.
You’ll be amazed by the amount of love you can give to another human being. All of your wounds will heal and your heart will start beating in a different, happier rhythm.
When real love finds you, you will know it. And until that happens, just wait. Believe.
See also: If You Feel Like You’re Going To Be Single Forever, Read This
