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Life

22nd Apr 2018

Single and don’t want to be? A relationship expert thinks they know why

Jade Hayden

Is this a personal attack, or?

There are plenty of reasons why people are single.

Some of them are happy being on their own. Others want to play the field and not be tied down to one person.

And others just don’t have a care in the world about relationships because they’ve got lots of other things going on in their lives and settling down with somebody else just is not on their radar at the moment.

Some people, however, don’t want to be single.

They think they’re doing everything within their power to find someone to spend a bit of time with, eat some food with, and have an odd sexual relation or two alongside.

However, as it turns out, they might not be.

According to a relationship expert, there might be a reason why people who don’t want to be single are still single… and it has nothing to do with the lack of suitable partners floating around the place.

Relationship psychologist Melanie Schiling told Huff Post Australia that most single people actually have a pretty big role in keeping themselves single – even if they don’t want to be.

She said that most people are afraid of being hurt again and that fear turns into a scepticism that stops them from wanting to meet anyone new.

Essentially, we’re all too good at protecting ourselves from harm that we find it difficult to let other people in.

“There is a difference between being healthily sceptical and undermining your own happiness,” Schiling said.

In her opinion, there are three things that are stopping people from finding new relationships.

The first is believing that you “don’t deserve happiness” or that you’re “better off alone.”

The second is the belief that all men or women are the same, and that just because something negative happened to you in one relationship, it’s automatically going to happen again.

And the third is assuming that all relationships are the same and that having one will make you less independent… because, understandably, if you’re in a healthy one, it won’t.

All seems simple enough until you’re getting ghosted for the eighth time in a month though, doesn’t it?