If You’re Tired of Looking for Love — Here’s What Helped Me Keep Going
We talk a lot about how to build healthy relationships. How to find love. How to meet people online. How to turn a first date into something real and eventually build a strong, happy relationship.
But before you can build a relationship, you have to find one first. And for anyone who has been looking for love for a long time, I think this is something you need to hear.
For me, looking for love was a very long and exhausting journey. I’ve always been a romantic at heart. I wanted to believe in that kind of happy, once-in-a-lifetime love. In soulmates. In finding my person.
So I kept looking. For years. And along the way, I went through an enormous number of disappointments, toxic relationships, abuse, heartbreak, and all kinds of experiences I would rather forget.
And eventually, I found love. But there is something I have always compared the search for love to: looking for a job. The two processes are surprisingly similar.
At some point, you become so exhausted from searching that you simply put your hands down and decide you don’t want to do it anymore. And honestly? I understand that feeling very well.
When you’re looking for a job, you have to tell the same story about yourself over and over again. You explain who you are, what you’ve done, what you can do, what you’re looking for. Then you wait. Maybe you get an interview. Maybe you don’t. Maybe you get rejected. Then you start again. And again. And again.
Looking for a relationship can feel exactly the same. You meet someone new. You tell them about yourself. You get to know them. You text. You go on a date. And every single time, somewhere in the back of your mind, you think: Maybe this is it. Maybe this is the match.
And then it isn’t. You get disappointed. You get angry. You get tired. And the whole thing starts all over again.
So what helped me keep going?
I took breaks. Yes, I stopped looking for a month. Sometimes two. I didn’t meet anyone. I didn’t date. I didn’t talk to new people. I simply stopped. And it helped.
Because sometimes you don’t need to try harder. Sometimes you just need to breathe. Then, when I felt ready again, I started looking. I was prepared to tell the same things about myself over and over again.
Just like I do now when I’m looking for work. I sit in interview after interview and tell people the same things about myself again and again, day after day.
Every time, you hope: This could be the one. And then it isn’t. And you’re disappointed all over again. But, as the saying goes, the one who keeps walking will eventually get there.
If you just sit around waiting for a miracle or happiness to fall from the sky and land on your head, chances are it probably won’t happen. Sometimes you have to actually walk toward it.
Yes, Sometimes the Problem Is You
I know this isn’t the most pleasant thing to hear. But if you’ve been searching for years, if you keep getting into the same kinds of relationships, if the same patterns keep repeating, then at some point you have to start looking at yourself.
Not to blame yourself. But to understand yourself. Because yes, maybe the problem is you. It certainly was partly me. If I hadn’t started working with a psychologist, I might have ended up in another abusive relationship and nothing would have changed.
I had to start working on my own traumas, disappointments, expectations, and patterns. Because they can get in the way more than we realize. We often say that we keep attracting the wrong people.
But sometimes we are the ones repeatedly choosing similar people because we react to them. Because something about them feels familiar. Because we fall for certain behaviors over and over again.
And until we understand why, the same story can keep repeating itself from one relationship to the next. So yes, you need to work on yourself. You need to be willing to spend the money and the time. Find a genuinely good specialist — a psychologist or psychotherapist — who can help you sort through all those internal messes you’ve been carrying around.
It’s not always easy. But sometimes it’s necessary.
Know What You Actually Want
I also think it’s incredibly important to know what kind of relationship you actually want. Not just: “I want someone.” But what does your ideal relationship look like? How do you imagine spending your time together? How do you communicate? How do you deal with disagreements? Where do you want to live? What kind of life do you want to build?
It’s similar to knowing where you want to live, what your dream home looks like, or what your dream job and successful career look like. You don’t have to know every tiny detail. But you should have some idea of the bigger picture.
At the same time, lower your list of requirements. There is a very good chance that the person who eventually becomes your partner will not have exactly the height you imagined, the exact hair color, eye color, style, taste in music, hobbies, personality traits, and all the other things you once wrote down in your head.
Real people don’t come with filters. You probably won’t find someone who matches every single detail of your fantasy. But there will be similarities. And some things are much more important than appearance or a list of hobbies. Your values. Your attitude toward life. The way you treat each other. The way you communicate. The way you feel when you’re together. Those things matter.
Dating Became a Job for Me
At one point, dating really did feel like a job. I had moved to a new country on my own. I was meeting people and trying to build a new life. I talked to people. I went on dates. Sometimes I met someone. Sometimes I didn’t. I tried to learn as much as I could about a person even while we were still texting. And I was always very clear about one thing: I was looking for a serious relationship.
Tinder actually blocked me many times, for no apparent reason. Apparently, that’s something they sometimes do when they think you might be spam or something similar. I was getting a lot of messages and answering relatively few of them, so maybe the algorithm decided I looked suspicious.
Who knows. But I kept going. Because for me, finding love was something I had to actively work at. And eventually, something happened that I honestly didn’t expect. Love came into my life when I had almost given up.
When I had practically stopped believing it was possible. You have no idea how many times I thought I was going to be alone for the rest of my life. I genuinely believed I would never meet anyone. That I would never find my person.
And the funny thing is that at the same time, I was working in a marketing and social media department for a dating website. I was literally the classic shoemaker without shoes. For years.
Learning to Be Alone Changed Everything
At some point, I realized that I had to learn how to be alone. Not because I wanted to be alone forever. But because I needed to be okay with myself. I read books. I learned how to accept myself. I learned how to go to the movies alone. I learned how to enjoy my own company.
And you know what? It really helps. It’s not just one of those nice-sounding pieces of advice people throw around. It actually works.
Once you learn how to be alone, how to take responsibility for your own life, and how to genuinely enjoy being with yourself — not because you have no other choice, but because you’re actually comfortable there — something changes.
You stop desperately looking for someone to save you. And I think that’s when the best people can start entering your life. Love. Friendship. Work. New connections. Whatever it is. Because you are no longer asking another person to fill a hole inside you.
Nobody Is Coming to Save You
There is one golden truth I learned from all of this: You can’t build a healthy relationship if you’re looking for someone to save you.
A relationship shouldn’t be your rescue plan. Another person cannot make you happy if you’re completely empty and unhappy inside. They can add to your happiness. They can make your life richer. They can share beautiful things with you.But they cannot save you.
And that’s probably one of the most important things to understand before entering a relationship.
You shouldn’t look for love because you’re lonely, bored, sad, or desperate for someone to make your life feel meaningful. You should enter a relationship when you’re already able to stand on your own.
When you have your own life. Your own interests. Your own friends. Your own dreams. Then another person doesn’t become your entire world. They simply become a beautiful part of it.
So What Do You Do When You’re Exhausted?
You keep going. But you don’t have to force yourself every single day. When your hands drop, that’s okay. Take a break. Give yourself a month. Give yourself two. The world won’t stop. Nothing terrible will happen. You can delete the dating app. You can stop talking to new people. You can stay home. You can just live your life for a while.
And then, when you’re ready, try again. Just don’t give up forever. Don’t convince yourself that something is wrong with you. But at the same time, be willing to change the things that genuinely need changing.
Because working on yourself doesn’t end when you finally find a relationship. It continues throughout the relationship, too. Finding love is not the end of the journey. It’s another part of it.
So if you’re currently looking for love, friendship, your people, or even a new job, and you’re starting to feel like you simply can’t do it anymore, I want you to know something:
I’ve been there. My hands dropped, too. More than once. And I still found my way through it. So keep walking. Take a break when you need one. Work on yourself. Try again.
And don’t forget that your timeline doesn’t have to look like anyone else’s. Maybe your story is simply taking longer to unfold. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad story. And sometimes, just when you’re completely convinced that nothing is going to change, everything changes.
So don’t give up. Keep going. I’m rooting for you. And wherever you are in this process, I hope you find the people, the love, and the life you’re looking for.
The road is conquered by the one who keeps walking.
Remember that. I’m sending you a big hug. ❤️
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