Member-only story
5 Reasons You Can’t Hold On to a Relationship
And what you can do to change that
I am 33 and have been blissfully married for nearly five years now, and have known my wife for nearly a decade. But many of my friends from school and college are still single.
A handful of them are single by choice (at least according to them), but the majority because they’re unable to find that long-term partner. Every time they start feeling that a relationship might be “the one,” there’s something that goes wrong and they’re running for the door.
Are they all just unlucky in love or is there a bigger issue at play? I’ve started to think that we may be living in an era where we’ve got a large population of people that want long-term partners, but have lost the ability to do some of the most basic relationship things right.
Here are a few common observations.
#1 — The illusion of abundance
Gone are the days when the only way of getting a date was by mustering the courage to ask that crush of yours out. That friend of a friend, the girl in your class, that guy who lives next door but you’ve never exchanged a word with.
Someone had to make the first move — and it was terrifying. But the anticipation, the wait, and the chase all made it…
