17 Brutally Honest Reasons Your Love Life Is A Mess That Only You Can Change
You’ve been cheated on or screwed over somehow, and now you’re a ruthless monster. Disloyalty isn’t a zombie bite – you don’t inevitably turn into what hurt you, but it’s a popular excuse for those looking to justify their wrongdoings.
While modern romantics can easily be summed up as a circus gone awry, in which the animals have broken loose and innocent bystanders are at risk, we often don’t take accountability for our own part in situations that end poorly. Yes, sometimes people are terrible and can do bad things to you — but other times there are factors we’d rather turn a blind eye to than acknowledge. Here are some possible reasons why your love life might resemble a tear-jerking romantic comedy, minus the happy ending.
1. You’ve been cheated on or screwed over somehow, and now you’re a ruthless monster. Disloyalty isn’t a zombie bite – you don’t inevitably turn into what hurt you, but it’s a popular excuse for those looking to justify their wrongdoings.
2. You’re stuck in that in-between state of mind where you 50% don’t want to be romantically involved with anyone at all, and 50% spend a lot of time wondering what would happen if you gave a certain person a chance.
3. You don’t think highly of yourself. You know you’re this person if you find yourself liking people until you find out that they share a mutual interest, and suddenly you’re turned off, because subconsciously the fact that someone actually likes little old you is oddly unattractive.
4.When people play games, you play them back instead of disengaging altogether. It’s natural to enforce the eye for an eye rule when someone wrongs you, but the immature-dating-game-playing-slope is slippery. One day you’re casually retaliating, the next you’ve gone all the way down to their level, and are in a full-fledged war of childish one-upping shenanigans.
5.You’ll allow someone to make you feel bad emotionally, if, in exchange they can make you feel good physically.
6. You hold a grudge against romance and the idea of love in general instead of recognizing that a person (or maybe a multiple people) are responsible for your resentment.
7. You’re emotionally damaged, but instead of taking time to heal and doing what you can to fix yourself, you shatter others so they can reach your level of brokenness.
8. You don’t own an unbiased mirror. Meaning, you can do no wrong in your eyes and everyone else is to blame. In some instances that may be the case, but when there’s a pattern it’s worth reflecting on and considering that maybe, even if your intentions were in the right place, your actions don’t always matchup accordingly.
9. You’ve seen some remarkably disastrous experiences your friends had in their dating lives, and are hesitant to plunge into anything because you’ve seen what feelings can do to people. So, instead you just kind of timidly tip toe around the deep, dark waters of dating, without any intentions of diving in, no matter who says they want to swim with you.
10. You’d rather perform the fugazi routine, pretending not to care about someone than put yourself out there and being vulnerable in the slightest.
11. You have a “type,” and it’s a list of insignificant, shallow things. “Someone tall and covered in ink” is an all too common response to the qualities folks are looking for. How about a not garbage human being, for starters? Then, if that person happens to have tattoos and long legs, it’s a bonus.
12. Poor timing. Two people can have feelings for each other, but if they’re holding back from speaking up until the perfect time, and that time never comes, they wind up failing to expressing their sentiments and missing opportunities.
13. Because of the rise of the hookup culture and vague labels like “talking,” a lot of people don’t know where they stand with others. It’s unclear what they want from you, what you’re allowed to want from them, and even how they feel about you. These are things that two people can’t afford to leave unaddressed when developing a relationship, yet for some reason these days, they often are.
14. You spend so much time caring about and fighting for the people who don’t want to be in your life that you neglect the ones who do.
15. You think you’re actually being loyal by sticking with a person who treats you terribly, instead of recognizing that you’re just uncomfortably comfortable, and ultimately being weak. You’re willing to go through bad experiences several times, because there’s an odd coziness in the fact that you’ve been through that routine before.
16. Your head and heart can’t get on the same page because your head is forever trying to convince your heart to do things that it knows better than doing, yet for some reason you can’t resist.
17. You simply don’t know what you love until it’s gone. 
