for you doesn't really exist: there are just different varieties and degrees of wrongness.

It's not your fault or theirs. Anyone, however lovely they seem at first, will turn out to

be maddening, difficult and deeply disappointing in a few – but to you very important – ways.

You are carrying the burden of Romanticism and are suffering from it gravely. You have

been made sick by the beguiling – but fatally oppressive – fantasy that there's a specific

person you are meant to be with who will end the longing, who will be your soul-mate, sexual

companion, chauffeur, housekeeper, co-parent, business partner and best friend. You see

them so clearly in your mind. That's because you made them up. But they don't, in fact,

exist. Advertising, films and music have done their utmost to convey to us that people do

eventually, after a little heartache, find their ideal other, their long-lost twin. It's

a very powerful idea to lean on when you're trying to sell a stranger a concert or movie

ticket. But it isn't true. The number of people around the world who are profoundly

emotionally, sexually, practically and intellectually happy with a partner, for more than a brief

period, is tiny. These lucky souls could, if gathered, comfortably fit on a small island

in the Maldives. You're unlikely to be among them – and won't win the lottery either.

This doesn't have to be the end. There's a more mature idea of love around that stresses

how invariably compromised all good relationships are. Compatibility is an achievement of love;

it shouldn't be its precondition. We manage to live wisely and comfortably around one

another when we stop insisting that our partners must constantly share all of our tastes, interests

and opinions. It is more than normal to be really quite lonely in large parts of our

emotional lives. An important factor – behind almost any decent relationship – is the

capacity of each partner to manage cheerfully on their own. Relationships don't solve

the problem of loneliness for very long. It's easy to lament how awful other possible partners

are. But reflect on the ways you are difficult to live with too. You must be to a significant

degree – not because you are unusually freakish, but because everyone carries with them a range

of flaws and failings that show up, horribly, on close inspection. You will to a significant

extent be ruining the life of anyone you get together with long-term. Stop looking for

a perfect partner and start looking for that far nicer and more enticing prospect: a good

enough one. The fact that no-one will be ideal doesn't mean that another person will have

nothing to offer. It's just that what we need from them will arrive wrapped up in a

lot of things we don't need and don't want. Hopefully, the long painful single period

hasn't just been wasted time. It's been a training ground for the true spirit of compromise

and gratitude that lasting

love demands.

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To learn more about love, try our set of cards that help answer that essential question, "Who should i be with?"