that goes, "Everything we do is just a way for us to be loved."

Would you agree?

Well, a lot of people in the world certainly seem to,

as nowadays, everyone seems to be obsessed with finding love and being in the perfect relationship.

And while there's nothing wrong with staying single, especially if it's by choice,

it's no doubt frustrating to constantly be let down in the pursuit of true love and have nothing but a broken heart to show for it.

After a few failed or maybe the lack of relationships, we can't help but ask ourselves,

what are we doing wrong?

Will we ever find true love?

Well, don't fret, luckily psychology has a few good answers for why true love seems to elude a lot of us and what we can do about it.

So with that said, here are six of the most common beliefs that keep people single.

I'm incomplete without a relationship.

Have you ever noticed that, ironically, it's always the people who want to be in a relationship the most that just can't seem to make it work.

Sure, they may date lots of people and never stay single for long, but their relationships seem to fizzle out just as quickly as they came to be.

Why?

Well, it's probably because they've mistakenly come to believe that they need a relationship in their life to be happy.

This belief echoes enmeshment, which is a concept in psychology and psychotherapy introduced by Salvador Minuchin

to describe families where personal boundaries are diffused and over concern for others leads to a loss of autonomous development,

but unbeknownst to them, it's actually that kind of desperation that's holding them back from finding true love,

because a lot of the time, they probably just settle for whoever comes along who's interested in them

without truly reflecting on what they want in a partner, what they want out of a relationship, and their worth as a person, even without one.

It didn't work out for my parents, so it won't work out for me.

There is an interesting well-known study by Glenn and Kramer back in 1987

that found that Children of divorce were actually the most likely to end up divorced themselves

and have the least amount of commitment to their own marriages

in spite of a great self-proclaimed desire for otherwise.

And many psychologists and researchers since then have speculated that

it's because parental divorce can have a powerful and lasting effect on our attitudes towards relationships even when we grow older.

So if it didn't work out between your parents, you might think all of your relationships are doomed to fail too.

Beliefs about abandonment

Experiencing parental abandonment in your earlier life can also negatively impact our chances at success in forming meaningful and lasting relationships.

In attachment theory, we'd call having this kind of belief a characteristic of those who are anxious avoidant.

People who have this kind of insecure attachment style tend to have a negative view of others, but a positive view of themselves.

So they become overly self-reliant, emotionally distant, and afraid of intimacy and commitment.

They feel uncomfortable with physical and emotional closeness, have trouble sharing their true feelings,

and tend to pull away when they feel others getting too attached to them.

Beliefs about being damaged

Studies such as the one by Hansen in 2010

showed that people who have experienced a traumatic event, especially a toxic or abusive relationship,

tend to wrestle with a lot of feelings of guilt, self-blame, and worthlessness.

They've internalized that trauma to mean that they're broken or that there must be something wrong with them, making them too damaged to love.

But if this is true for you, it's important that you understand that you are not what happened to you

and that the harm other people brought upon you was never your fault.

Someday, when you've begun to heal from the past and resolve this trauma, you will find someone who will help you see that.

I'm still waiting for THE ONE.

Lastly but certainly not least, another belief that might be keeping you single

is the idea that there's someone out there will be able to perfectly meet all of your unrealistically high standards and expectations.

Don't get us wrong, there is nothing bad about believing in soulmates,

it's just that so much of the logic behind it is inherently flawed.

And if the psychology of successful relationships has taught us anything,

it's that it's more about being the right person than finding the right person.

To illustrate, one of the most famous relationship experts in the world, psychologist John Gottman has found that

all happy, long term relationships exhibit mutual understanding, awareness, acceptance, respect, and reciprocity of appreciation and relationship maintenance.

Notice how what we do seems to matter more than the qualities we bring to a relationship?

So can you relate to any of the things we've mentioned on our list?

Are you guilty of believing some of the things here that keep you single against your choice?

Although we might not realize it, our thoughts have so much more power over us in our lives than we think.

So, it's important that we're mindful of the beliefs and attitudes that we have towards our relationships.

In the words of Plato, reality is created by the mind.

We can change our reality by changing your mind.

No matter what it is that's been holding you back from finding a happy and healthy relationship,

know that you can always reclaim your power by adopting a more positive mindset.

Look for love all around you and become more loving towards yourself before jumping head first into your next relationship.

So, do you plan to overcome your limited beliefs about love?