Why You Should Stop Searching for Love

Written by Uche Okeleke

It's such a beautiful thing when we find love. Or love finds us? Whoever finds who, the whole warm and romantic idea that this lonely us, would someday find the thing we have always believed is true love and then live happily ever after has got our heads in our shoes. Don't get me wrong, love is real and always out there. Neither is it a bad thing to let it find you or to find it.

What I am going to let you see how futile and even dangerous it is is the idea of searching for it in the way pop culture make it to be. If you are a young and single person, if you watch a lot of romantic movies or read plenty romance novels, if you have friends in too-good-to-be-true relationships with the dream boyfriend or girlfriend, chances are, you are seriously looking out for your true love. The person has to be out there. You just have to find them, right? Maybe. But you won't find them by searching or looking out for them. Why is it so? Well, in a nutshell, as you would find out if you stay with me a bit longer, great romantic relationships are a  human level complexity of social and psychological interactions that is not available in boutique forms.

There are certain outcomes you would get when you search for love according to your definition.

First, you would be searching for perfection. When we say we are searching for true love, what we doing at the conscious level is basically taking some human features that could be physical, behavioral, or economical and using them to mould an ideal personality we would then be looking out for. Meanwhile, at a subconscious level, we are developing a bias and repulsion against persons who don't fit into that ideal picture.

More often than not, we won't find that ideal person we have made up in flesh and blood. The longer we go searching for this imaginary person without finding, the more we sink into desperation and despair. Meanwhile, everyone else is getting into decent relationships and getting married. It is at this point you start wondering if there is something wrong about you that is making your dream partner not find you. Well, there is nothing wrong about you except you have made yourself think there is something wrong with everyone else but the partner you imagined.

This despair eventually leads to lowered self esteem and the appearance of desperation. When you find yourself in company of someone that remotely comes close to your ideal picture, everything in you is screaming PICK ME. Such desperation is hard to miss and playboys would take advantage of this. At the onset of relationships, it is great to express your love and affection in any possible way possible. You however don't want to seem like the partner is doing you a huge favour by being with you. That comes from a shattered self esteem arising from a long period of searching or waiting for someone like them to be in your life.

Secondly, where there is a chance that you find someone that comes close to your imagined ideal mate, there two outcomes you get, none of which is pretty. Like in the scenario in the previous paragraph, the power dynamics of the relationship is tilted in their favour as you are left feeling absurdly grateful rather than carrying your shoulders with pride as someone with such value to be a treasure found by the other person. You eventually begin to lower your standards and tolerate what you shouldn't just to keep them happy. Because you have been fixated on a certain collection of traits, you also tend to overlook other important traits that could be vital for your safety and state of mind.

Another outcome can be a case of having too many expectations. Expectations are always the killer of happiness in relationships. You have held this flawless image in your head so long that you cannot tolerate any human mistakes from this person. Once you begin to notice any regular flaws that would have been easily accommodated, you are disappointed. You feel tricked. You feel betrayed. You want out ASAP. Hence, it becomes nearly impossible to maintain a lasting relationship.

So what should you do instead?

Search for friendship.

Stop Searching for outright love from an ideal mate. Instead, look to develop friendship with as many decent person that comes your way. This helps you expand your field of options and ability to experience a diverse human interaction that is pure without any pressures of satisfying anyone. It offers you the chance to enjoy friendship without burden. I always advice single ladies ready to be married to keep multiple talking stage friendship with eligible men for this reason. Most times, the true love we are looking for is in form and shape our mind and senses are not trained to identify. For this reason, we might not know to look out for it and might not even recognize it if it comes to us. However, maintaining talking stage friendship with a wide field of male acquaintances allows us to begin to notice and identify this love from days and weeks of honest interactions. This is not the same as keeping multiple sex partners. As a matter of fact, this only works if you are absolutely not sleeping with any of them.

What we often call true love is nothing but natural, honest and devoted friendship that is rich with loyalty and sacrifice. This is not something you find by bumping into someone at the grocery store. It is often cultivated over a period of time. So allow yourself have those rich friendships with as many persons as possible.

Define Your Deal Breakers.

Of course while you are having those friendships, be clear about your deal breaker traits. Be clear about personal characters you can't tolerate and eliminate those who have these traits early enough. After you have defined you deal breakers, be open minded about other flaws, willing to tolerate them. The honest truth is, you will never find someone with no character or physical flaws at all. The best marriage and friendship are built with people whose flaws you can live with and who do not possess the kind of flaws you can't stand.

We can make our lives easier by reconsidering the idea of desperately searching for love and instead focus on building enriching friendships with many persons from which the kind of love suitable for our body soul and spirit will materialize.

Uche Okeleke is the author of "Dating Hacks for Church Girls" which can be bought HERE!