How Many Failed Relationships Will You Go Through Before You Develop Self-Awareness and Succeed?

Even though the development of Self-Awareness assures self-growth, self-empowerment and one’s ability to cultivate successful and satisfying relationships, it is an unfortunate fact that many often begin to seriously contemplating developing Self-Awareness only when they have reached the point of being totally at a loss regarding their upsetting relationship-situation, feel they must do something to change it, and begin searching for answers and solutions in a way they haven’t attempted until now.Pursuing the Development of Self-Awareness usually happens when you are tired from being disillusioned and frustrated about your continuous failures to develop a satisfying relationship and you begin to wonder what’s going on.This usually happens after you have probably tried multiple ways to find a partner and establish a good relationship: you might have read books on relationships, may have attended a few workshops, accumulated relationship-advice tips on dating and relationships, have been on the dating-scene, wrote and shaped a wonderful profile, enrolled on various internet sites, chatted with others and met them, even begun some relationships – but have experienced more failures than successes.Turning to develop your Self-Awareness usually happens too when you run out of excuses in trying to explain the reasons for your failures. Is it really so that your partners are always the ones to blame? That you just haven’t met your “soul-mate” yet? That “you didn’t give it your best try”? That you were too “selective”?It is then, when you fail time and again and run out of reasons to explain and justify it, that out of no-other-choice you begin to wonder whether there is anything wrong with you which prevents you from succeeding in cultivating an intimate relationship. This is a scary thought, but the thought-of-last-resort. Having failed time and again means, so you tell yourself, that the time has come to find out what’s really going on!This is when you begin to be motivated to take a careful look at yourself (rather than putting the blame on others!) and find out whether there is anything you haven’t known about yourself until now. Could it be that you harmed your relationships without knowing that you did? Could it be that others (who you were dating) saw you in different ways than the one you see yourself? Could it be that you behaved in ways which made others irritated, angry at you, annoyed, frightened, humiliated, and so on?You would have rather not look inwards and ask yourself these questions, but you feel this is your last chance to get hold on whatever goes on with your failed attempts at relationships. With all fairness, you don’t seek to develop your Self-Awareness out of the motivation to learn about yourself. You do so because you have no other choice! The last failed relationship; the last partner who left you; the last time your heart broke to pieces; the latest disastrous fight you had with your partner before he/she “vanished” – was the straw which broke the camel’s back.You have no other choice: it’s either to develop Self-Awareness and get a grip on whatever it is that’s causes you to fail in your relationships, or continue with this terrible and tiring path of one disappointment after another, one disillusionment after the next, one failure and yet another one. You know this path by heart. You’ve traded it a thousand and one times.It is then that you begin to be ready (ready, but not really motivated) to take some time (“some time”, you tell yourself!) to get to understand things you haven’t understood and realized until now. If developing Self-Awareness is the only way to move forward, you tell yourself, then well, you’ll attempt going this way, assuring yourself that you can stop any time you want; any time it’ll begin to be too frightening; any time you’ll feel it’s going nowhere.So you begin the process. Maybe you read a book (or two) about Self-Awareness. Maybe you talk with a relationship therapist. Maybe you share things with a good friend.
You tell yourself you need to be open to what you find out about yourself. That you need to pay attention to what you discover and not reject and deny it right away (as you might have done in past situations). You want this process, this phase of your life, to be done with as quickly as possible. If you must go through it you better do it right now and be over with!You tell yourself that developing your Self-Awareness may be “just another way” to find out how to succeed in cultivating a satisfying relationship. A new way you haven’t tried before. A way to receive another tip or two.It is difficult for you to acknowledge and accept the notion that this time it might be different. That developing Self-Awareness can’t be achieved in a one-shot-deal. One-day-workshop.You begin the process nonetheless while struggling within yourself. You ask yourself why you have embarked on this trip. You wonder what you’ll eventually get out of it. You approach it with suspicion, fear and annoyance. Will it or will it not provide you with the answers to what you are seeking?By now, however, you know there are no “formulas” for successful relationships. By now you have tried all you could. You know there is no magic stick.You repeat telling yourself you have no other choice. Embarking on developing your Self-Awareness is like entering the twilight zone. You hope the morning light will soon shine upon you.And it will! As long as you are persistent enough in looking inwards, courageous to acknowledge and accept what you find out about the ways in which you shot yourself in the foot in relationships, the Self-Awareness that you’ll develop will place you on the right track to change whatever needs change and empower you to cultivate a successful and satisfying relationship.