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1. Hiding Who You Are to Fit Into a Relationship

Hiding who you are takes a ton of energy. You can only suppress your emotions, reactions, and needs for so long. Eventually — and sooner rather than later — the real you will start showing up and shocking the person you’re with. 

Once you’re in a healthy loving relationship, you’ll realize you started to attract your partner precisely when you decided you were good enough to never hide again. 

2. Confusing the Trappings of Love for Real Love

The trappings of love can be disguised as frequent phone calls from your date, his or her desire to see you and be with you, the arrival of flowers, cards, compliments, poems, and over-the-top attention. They may make you feel loved and wanted, as if you’ve found your Prince or Princess Charming. 

Once you’re in a healthy loving relationship, you’ll realize that these trappings didn’t necessarily mean the person was in love with you. Rather, they’re simply a few ways people express like, desire, attraction and, yes, love. They’re also ways people behave out of habit, to be nice, to be liked, because they think they should, or because they get caught up in the moment. Real love shows itself in more powerful ways, such as friendship, support, acceptance, and communication, and uses the trappings of love as the icing on the cake. 

3. Blaming Relationship Mishaps on the Other Person

Let’s say the relationship goes south. There’s a bad argument or even a breakup, and all you can see is how the other person caused the problem. Sound familiar? 

Once you’re in a healthy, loving relationship, you’ll realize your role is at least 50 percent of everything that happens in the relationship. You play this role either actively, by choices you make, or passively, by choices you fail to make. 

4. Not Allowing Time to Heal Between Relationships

OK, so you’re out of a relationship. You hate being alone. You’re hurt. You hate not having someone to share your life with. You find a new person and get into a relationship. But are you available to love a new person in a new relationship? 

Once you’re in a healthy loving relationship, you’ll realize that love deserves grieving and that you deserve time to learn from a failed relationship. You’ll realize being alone is not a punishment, nor is it torture. It is a gift of getting to know yourself. And you will realize your ability to be alone is what gives you the strength to create a loving relationship. 

5. Attraction Means You Are Meant to Be Together

You feel attracted or drawn to someone, and he or she to you. The relationship is obviously meant to be, especially if there are many commonalities between the two of you. This is even more so if you were brought together in an unusual, fateful sort of way. 

Once you’re together, you’ll realize these encounters were meant to be, but not necessarily in a way you thought. Most times, such encounters bring lessons, not loving relationships. True love more often than not reveals the fateful aspect later in the relationship, when you no longer need the evidence that you are meant to be together. 

6. Giving Too Much Personal Information Too Soon

Honesty is always the best policy, but too much honest and personal information on the first few dates is a great way to spoil a possible connection. Sharing too much information too quickly is likely to leave both of you feeling awkward, wanting to leave the situation. 

You’ll realize that a relationship needs time to develop before it can handle the deeply personal information. The longer the relationship has been around, the stronger it will be and the more it can handle without breaking. (Having said this, do not withhold information that would help the other person decide whether you are a good match or not.) 

7. Seeing People as You Want Them to Be (Instead of as Who They Really Are)

Have you ever started to date someone and thought he or she would be perfect . . . if only he made more money, or if she got her life together, or if he or she got rid of an addiction? Do you try to change others into your perfect image of them? 

People who want to grow and change will be the first to tell you how they are working on growing and changing. They don’t need you to be the agent of change. If you try to move someone in a direction they are not interested in going, it’ll take all of your energy. Even then, you’ll likely fail because it is your direction, not theirs. It’s better to choose people who you can love without changing. 

8. Believing a Relationship is all You Need to Be Happy and to Have a Complete Life

Thousands of singles are searching for the relationship, feeling as if it is their one key to a happy, fulfilled life. Meanwhile, they are robbing themselves of that happy, fulfilled life as it slips away day by day. 

While love is extremely important, it’s not the one thing that will fulfill you, complete you, or satisfy you. The minute you really do create a truly fulfilling life, you will attract love. 

9. Not Believing Who They Say They Are

Let’s say you start dating someone and money is not important to him or her — and thus there’s not much of it coming in. Later in the relationship, you get angry because this same person doesn’t have money. 

Or perhaps you get into a relationship with a person who tells you upfront that he or she is not interested in a committed relationship, but only wants to date. Later you feel frustrated and angry because you don’t have a committed relationship. The list of examples goes on. 

Once you’re in a healthy, loving relationship, you’ll realize people tell you who they are, what they want, what they will and will not do, and how your relationship will turn out right from the start. They might not tell you this information verbally, but you will see it in their actions or behaviors. You would do well to listen and believe them. 

10. Going Too Fast Into a Relationship

I frequently mention this dating mistake because it is prevalent in our culture and encouraged by the way the media portrays love. Simply stated, you cannot build a relationship in 24 hours, a week, or even a month. 

Once you’re in a healthy, loving relationship, you’ll realize you simply cannot rush the process of relationship-building. Even if you believe the two of you are meant to be together, you should build your relationship slowly. And if you do rush in, you and your partner will suffer the consequences.