• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

WhyWeSuffer.com

Transformative Insights from Depth Psychology

  • BASIC PRINCIPLE
  • About
  • Services
  • Comments
  • Contact
  • Books
  • Show Search
Hide Search

Are You Hopeless of Ever Finding Love?

Peter Michaelson · April 7, 2016 ·

In any context, hopeless feelings can be traced to inner conflict.
In any context, hopeless feelings can be traced to inner conflict.

Hopeless romantics are frequently daydreamers, idealists, and poets—distinguished for their spirited passion and steady optimism. But another kind of hopeless romantic is stalled in lonely wretchedness.

Painful hopelessness stalks many people who, feeling unlucky in love, are convinced they’ll never find a loving partner for a committed relationship. These people have now activated a Catch-22: the more hopeless they feel, the more likely the psychosomatic side-effects of that negative emotion will make them less attractive to healthy people.

Often prowling in the psyche of such individuals is the sense that they don’t have much to give or to offer another person. Who they are deep down, it feels, is simply not enough to capture the love and devotion of others. “Sometimes I feel so broken,” one woman said, “that I’m sure the universe doesn’t care whether I ever find love.”

Hopelessness in whatever context it arises is a painful symptom of inner conflict. According to depth psychology, a person often fails to establish an intimate relationship because he or she is using the playing field of relationships as a way to replay and recycle that conflict.

What does this mean, exactly? A person’s difficulty in establishing a loving relationship can frequently be understood as the acting out of a deeper issue. That deeper issue often involves a person’s tendency to gravitate to feeling defective and unworthy. These negative emotions constitute deep painful identifications. The person feels (sometimes only semi-consciously) that these negative emotions represent some ultimate truth about him or her. These emotions have become unconscious identifications. They become the weak links in a person’s emotional life, so that even an attractive, smart person can be defeated by them.

People frequently experience inner conflict (and, hence, negative emotions) most intensely in the area where a great deal is at stake with respect to one’s dreams, aspirations, and hopes. So it’s not surprising when the weak link shows up in one’s struggle to establish a loving relationship.

Here’s what’s happening: The person feeling hopeless about finding love is sometimes unconsciously willing or determined not to establish a loving relationship. This means the person is likely to sabotage the prospect of love because, at a deeper level, love feels alien. This person is prepared to cling to (and indulge in) an old painful identity (sense of self) that’s rooted in feeling flawed, unworthy, and unloved. This person is likely plagued by self-doubt, self-rejection, and, in some cases, self-hatred. He or she is incapable of establishing a truly loving relationship until more inner harmony and self-respect are established.

Here’s the basic conflict: The individual does indeed want to find love and establish an intimate, enduring relationship; at an unconscious level, though, this person is inclined or even determined to continue to experience what is unresolved within, namely a sense of lacking intrinsic value and deserving of being rejected and scorned. This conflict needs to be brought out into the open and made fully conscious.

This person, while acutely conscious of wanting to find love, is not likely to be conscious of the extent of his or her emotional resonance with the negative emotions of being unwanted and unloved. This is the key understanding that leads to resolution. You have to become aware of the part of you that’s prepared to continue to feel weak, unworthy, rejected, and unloved. The more you “own” that part, the sooner you can escape its influence.

Hopelessness can, in itself, become a psychological defense. The unconscious defense is saying: ”I don’t want to cling to my painful old sense of being unworthy and unloved. Look at how much I suffer in failing to find a loving partner. That proves I do indeed want to feel loved. My hopeless feelings are proof of how important love is to me.” However, this “proof” is intended only to cover up the individual’s resonance with feeling unwanted and loved. In this way, hopelessness becomes an allegiance to one’s old painful sense of self.

That old sense of self goes back into childhood when so many of us experienced—even when we had decent parents—deep impressions of being unloved and lacking in value.

For the purposes of self-deception, a psychological defense often succeeds in covering up the hidden attachment to feeling unworthy and unloved. However, a great price must be paid for this cover-up. To make the defense work, the individual is required to feel, to an acutely painful degree, the hopelessness of ever finding love. This hopelessness and the accompanying guilt and shame, as well as the self-sabotage involved when it comes to actually finding love, are big prices to pay for this self-deception.

These painful feelings have become emotional attachments. What does that mean? As long as the inner conflict remains, we are strongly compelled to continue to experience (emotionally attached to) what is unresolved, even though experiencing such negative emotions is often quite painful and self-defeating. The good news is that we can let go of these attachments once we make them conscious.

The person feeling intensely hopeless about finding love can become cognizant, deep in the psyche, of a bittersweet attraction to feeling unloved. This knowledge registers at some level, though the person is prone to deny it. Attractions to what are unresolved and negative inside us constitute “secret” attachments. These attachments are one of the largely unrecognized quirks (or, perhaps to be more precise, perversities) of human nature. Humankind refuses to recognize this dark side because acknowledging it is felt to be so offensive to the conscious ego and our idealized sense of self.

Our unconscious mind gets away with playing wicked tricks on us when we’re psychologically naïve.

Here are some common thoughts or feelings associated with such hopelessness: “There’s no use in trying; I’m too old (ugly, poor, boring, etc.); Why bother? Nothing will work out; No available good women (men) are left; I’ll never be able to get what I want.” All of these thoughts or feelings are rationalizations (or defenses) that a person produces in order to continue to live through the emotional attachments to feeling unloved, rejected, and unworthy.

Another aspect of this inner conundrum involves inner passivity. The person who is feeling hopeless of ever finding love can also be attached emotionally to feelings of helplessness. The sense is that one is not only hopeless of finding love but also utterly helpless to do anything about the situation.

People experiencing hopeless often become desperate for love. They feel they’ll do anything for it, including being overly compliant or promiscuous. Such desperation also serves as a defense. Now, instead of just wanting love as a defense (as in the example above), the person is desperate for love: “I don’t want to feel unloved and unworthy. Look at how desperate I am to find someone who will love me.” Using desperation as a defense is paying an especially big price because this negative feeling is acutely painful. People often are required by unconscious accounting to raise the stakes in this manner in order to effectively maintain the cover-up of their collusion in negative emotions.

They also frequently become envious of couples who appear to be happy with one another. One again, the negative symptom—in this case, envy—serves as a defense: “I don’t want to feel unloved and unworthy. Look at how envious I am of those people who are in love with each other.” Using envy as a defense is also costly because envy is obviously no fun either.

People who are hopeless about finding love sometimes become manic with excitement when a romantic prospect appears on the scene. They need to be on guard because the other side of mania is a crash into depression or despair. The manic excitement is also a defense. It goes like this: “See how happy and thrilled I am about the prospect of finding love with this person. That proves I want to be loved.” Again, this proof is spurious.

Hopelessness can be experienced in other areas of life, such as ever finding a good job, achieving happiness, or becoming prosperous. The same psychological knowledge can resolve these situations. Whenever hopelessness arises, we want to identify the emotional weak link and go there to strengthen it, even as we’re rather startled to see how attached we are to that weakness and how much we identify with ourselves through it.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Share This:

Filed Under: Depth Psychology Tagged With: defective, desperate for love, feeling bad, inner conflict, unwanted, unworthy

Primary Sidebar

MOST OF OUR suffering is avoidable. Our emotional and behavioral problems can be resolved. We just have to understand how our psyche works. This website is dedicated to teaching vital psychological knowledge. Do you need help to curb drinking or to get off drugs? Are you facing a divorce or a career failure? Are you anxious, depressed, or overwhelmed by life's challenges? Perhaps you're simply unable to get your mind or intelligence into high gear. I can help. I'm Peter Michaelson, an author and psychotherapist in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I teach people how to overcome unconscious programming that produces suffering and self-defeat.

WHY WE SUFFER–THE BOOK

My book, Why We Suffer--A Western Way to Understand and Let Go of Unhappiness, is the story of what mainstream psychology has failed to teach the world. The depth psychology in this book has vital insights, answers, and solutions for you. Click on the Books link above for more information. --

Other Articles

  • The President Hears from Dr. Freud
  • People Who Hate Love
  • The Language that Liberates the Self
  • Dare We See the Trump in Us?
  • The Emotional Catering Service
  • Are You Addicted to Self-Punishment?
  • A Hidden Cause of Loneliness
  • The Impulse to Destroy Democracy
  • We Get Stronger by Seeing Our Weakness
  • The Warmonger in Our Psyche
  • Armed with Stubbornness, the Weak Go on the Warpath
  • How to Rescue Yourself from Suffering
  • My New Book (of Poetry!) Is Versed in Depth Psychology
  • Finding in Self the Richness of Being
  • Sports Fans and Their Discontents
  • Two Terrible Voices in Your Head
  • Why People Support Donald Trump
  • The Vital Knowledge We Disown
  • Climate Anxiety and the Psyche
  • Abandonment, Self-Abandonment, and Democracy
  • Our Readiness to Feel Controlled
  • The Key to Emotional Self-Regulation
  • Seven Villains in a Sad Love Story
  • The Latest Pandemic: Feeling Overwhelmed
  • The Blindness of the Species
  • Why Americans Are So Wretchedly Divided
  • Are You Passive to Your Mind?
  • What Freud Knew That We Still Hate to See
  • The Emotional Conflict Behind 50 Mental-Health Symptoms
  • A Novelist’s Quest to Unravel His Madness
  • When Inner Growth Feels Impossibly Difficult
  • Haunted by Incessant Wanting
  • My New Book: Healing Our Deadly Flaw
  • Inner Conflict’s Role in Child Suicide
  • Putin’s Psyche
  • The Flaw Wars that Sabotage Relationships
  • Can You Be Your Own Therapist?
  • The Difference Between Learned Helplessness and Inner Passivity
  • The Sad Sordidness of Inner Conflict
  • The Deep Knowledge that Liberates the Self
  • The Four Dimensions of Our Ego
  • Are You Overly Sensitive to Rejection?
  • Evolving Consciousness is the Lifeblood of Mental Health
  • Answers to Questions from Readers (Part 9)
  • Don’t Be Duped by Your Defenses
  • The Shocking Secrets of the Psyche
  • The Undercover Enabler of Habitual Oversleeping
  • Understanding the Assault on the U.S. Capitol
  • The Sheepishness of the Psyche: A One-Act Play
  • Three Self-Defeating Reactions at the Heart of American Disunity
  • Answers to Questions from Readers (Part 8)
  • Our Compulsion to Self-Punish
  • Ego and Self Do Battle for the Soul of America
  • The Hazards of Inner Conflict
  • A Toxic Inner Process Afflicts Humanity
  • Don’t Let America Betray Herself
  • Inner Conflict Ripens in the Hothouse of Pandemic
  • Living and Dying with Coronavirus
  • How the Coronavirus Plays with Our Mind
  • Access the Genius Within
  • How Meditation and Depth Psychology Overlap
  • Guilt: A Favorite Way to Suffer
  • Understanding the Psyche of Boys
  • The Joy of Militant Ignorance
  • Answers to Questions From Readers (Part 7)
  • Breaking the Chains of Self-Imposed Oppression
  • Jordan Peterson’s Blind Spot
  • Learning to See Ourselves Objectively
  • When Food is Used to Feed Inner Conflict
  • How You Can Save the World
  • The Inner Critic is a Primitive Brute Force
  • The Self-Defeat of Passive Morning Thoughts
  • Get Rid of Guilt with Deeper Insight (II)
  • Discover Sublimation, the Agent of Success
  • The U.S. Government’s Flawed Intelligence on Clinical Depression
  • Answers to Questions from Readers (Part 6)
  • 12 Ways We Fail to See or Experience Reality
  • Is Ambivalence a Hidden Factor in Much of Human Misery?
  • Inner Conflict is the Source of Cognitive Distortion
  • A Psychological Hindrance to National Unity
  • A Technique for Overcoming Insomnia
  • Liberals Need More Psychological Insight
  • Why We Urgently Need Inner Truth
  • Notes to Psychotherapists on Addressing Inner Passivity
  • Are You Living Your True Story?
  • Another Visual Portrayal of Our Psyche’s Dynamics
  • Get to Know Your Psyche’s Operating Systems
  • Illustrating the Characters Who Mess With Our Mind
  • How to Love Yourself
  • Don’t Let Inner Passivity Undermine Democracy
  • Connecting With Our Best Self
  • The Deeper Roots of Social Unrest
  • The Las Vegas Killer’s Hidden Motive
  • My Latest Book is Now Available
  • Insight that Conquers Incessant Negative Thinking
  • New Editions of All My Books Now Available
  • The Exhausting Race against Time
  • The Perils of Past, Present, and Future
  • The Mocking Voice of Inner Resistance
  • The Essentials of Empowerment for Enablers and Codependents
  • Answers to Questions from Readers (Part 5)
  • The Appeal of Alternative Facts
  • Are You a Clone of Your Identifications?
  • Unmasking Fear Itself
  • Fundamentalism and the Psyche
  • Ascending to Joy
  • Now’s the Time for Heroes
  • Feeling Like a Fraud or an Imposter?
  • The Invisible Wall of Psychological Resistance
  • Cognitive Therapy’s Flawed Premise
  • Dealing with Election Aftershock
  • After the Election: Healing the Divide
  • Collapsing into Helplessness
  • Solve the Mystery of Your Suffering
  • Answers to Questions from Readers (Part 4)
  • An Insightful Case of Self-Injury
  • Understanding Inner Evil in Mass-Killers
  • A Common Theme in Relationship Strife
  • Breaking Free of Inner Passivity
  • Are You Hopeless of Ever Finding Love?
  • Words to Enlighten Younger Children
  • Deeper Reflections on Inner Passivity
  • Escape the Misery of Moodiness
  • Answers to Questions from Readers (Part 3)
  • Emotional Fortitude for Anxious Times
  • Follow Your Fantasies to Self-Awareness
  • Answers to Questions from Readers (Part 2)
  • The Art of Self-Regulation
  • The Thrill of Fear
  • Answers to Questions from Readers
  • “Why Am I so Easily Discouraged?”
  • Paris and Our Discontents
  • Unconscious Bias in Race Relations
  • Acquiring a Feel for Natural Aggression
  • Defensiveness for Dummies
  • Exposing the Roots of Emotional Suffering
  • Who Wants to Be a Celebrity?
  • Say Goodbye to Your Regrets
  • How to Recognize Good Psychotherapy
  • Visions of Human Destiny
  • Tears of Self-Deception
  • Westerners Who Identify with Terrorists
  • A Decisive Look at Indecision
  • Neurotics on Capitol Hill
  • Inner Passivity Impairs Leadership Skills
  • Hidden Dynamics of Racism
  • Unconscious Factors Fuel Abortion Fight
  • The Two-Minute Inner Workout
  • Defeating the Inner Bully
  • When Life Becomes Unreal and Dreamlike
  • Releasing Inner Passivity
  • Deliverance from Addictions & Compulsions
  • Life’s Painful Entanglements (Part II)
  • Insight into Gender Identity Disorder
  • The Psychology of Wealth Disparity
  • How Do We Achieve Self-Control?
  • Anger and the APA
  • A Painful Game People Play (Part I)
  • Prisoners of Guilt
  • Neurosis Unbound
  • The Lingering Pain of Old Shame
  • Emerging from Shyness
  • An Unconscious Factor in PTSD
  • When in Doubt about Sexual Orientation
  • Why Students Fail to Learn
  • How to Enhance Your Verbal Skill
  • Be Brave when Truth Comes Knocking
  • What Warps the Mind of Domestic Terrorists?
  • Greed as a Mental-Health Disorder
  • The Core of Being
  • The Folly of Modern Psychology
  • The Scoop on Intimate Partner Abuse
  • Tormented Mothers, Endangered Babies
  • Terrific Knowledge for Trying Times
  • Stung by Ingratitude
  • How to Be Your Own Inner Guide
  • Does Inner Growth Require Practical Steps?
  • A Remedy for Feeling Trapped
  • The Golden Rule Needs Depth Psychology
  • A Deadly Case of Inner Conflict
  • Vital Knowledge for Marriage Intimacy
  • Stressed Out in America
  • Four Steps to Stifle Our Inner Critic
  • Oh, Sweet Narcissism
  • The Pain We Lock Away
  • Cognitive Therapy’s Distorted Thinking
  • Indecisive No More
  • Chasing the Shadow
  • How Inner Passivity Robs Men of Power
  • A New Understanding of Bipolar Disorder
  • A Chaos Theory of the Mind
  • Free Yourself from Inner Conflict
  • Curbing Our Appetite for Brutality
  • The Futility of Compulsive Approval-Seeking
  • How Worriers Unconsciously Chose to Suffer
  • Get to Know Your Psychological Defenses
  • The Love Song of the Self
  • Finding Inner Longitude
  • Overcoming a Type of Resistance to Studying
  • Understanding Anorexia
  • The Human Weakness behind Alcoholism
  • Rebutting 9/11 Conspiracy Beliefs
  • Achieving Inner Freedom
  • The Mysterious Allure of Kinky Sex
  • Hooked on Deprivation
  • Aspects of Women’s Empowerment (Part II)
  • Men’s Resistance to Women’s Empowerment
  • The Missing Link in OCD
  • A Hidden Reason for Suicidal Thoughts
  • Overcoming Fear of Intimacy
  • O Shame, Where is Thy Secret Source?
  • The Correct Interpretation of Our Dreams
  • Escaping the Clutches of Helplessness
  • The Double Barrels of Gun Mania
  • Exterminate Infestations of Negative Thoughts
  • The Psychology Behind Mass Shootings
  • Our Messy Mix of Aggression and Passivity
  • Speeding Up Our Evolution
  • Why Our Emotional Suffering Persists
  • Easing Tension and Stress at Family Gatherings
  • Wallowing in the Lap of Bitterness
  • The Hidden Dynamics of Marital Strife
  • The Psychological Roots of National Disunity
  • The Futile Dialogue in Our Head
  • Psychologists of the World, Go Deeper
  • When You Feel Bad About Yourself
  • Cultivating a Life of Disappointment
  • Lost in the Fog of Inner Passivity
  • The Private Joke behind Our Laughter
  • Why We Fear and Hate the Truth
  • When Eyes Are Blinders of the Soul
  • How Deeper Insight Relieves Stress
  • When Money Enriches Our Suffering
  • The Common Ingredient in Human Misery
  • The Infantile Basis of Our Fears
  • Cynicism: The Battle Cry of the Wimp
  • Desperately Seeking Validation
  • Being Seen in a Negative Light
  • The Need to Believe in Yourself
  • Why We Dither on Climate Change
  • Avoidable Miseries of the Workplace
  • Taming the “Little Monsters” of Insomnia
  • A Plague of Neurosis Upon Our House
  • The Origins of Feeling Overwhelmed
  • Teach Your Children Well
  • Why We’re Quick to “Go Negative”
  • 8 Ways We Sabotage Physical Health
  • Occupy the Psyche
  • The Astonishing Basis of Our Addictions
  • Deliverance From the Lonesome Blues
  • Our Global Strategy for Self-Defeat
  • The Mayo Clinic’s Bogus Psychology
  • The Meaning of Evolved Consciousness
  • The Hanky-Panky Behind Our Anger
  • Lincoln’s Integrity, Our Integrity
  • Stubbornness: The Guts to Fight Reality
  • A Participant in National Self-Sabotage
  • Underlying Dynamics that Breed Bullies
  • Deliverance from Low-Level Anxiety
  • The Politburo in Your Psyche
  • Nagging: Love Destroyer, Marriage Killer
  • A Singular Cause of War
  • The Temptations of the Injustice Collector
  • The Dire Determinants of Divorce
  • Enjoy the Quality of Your Consciousness
  • The Helplessness Trap in Cravings & Addictions
  • Mark Twain’s Mysterious Misery-Machine
  • Obesity and the Dopamine Fallacy
  • Four Favorite Ways to Suffer
  • The Deeper Issues that Produce Meanness
  • Panic Attacks Arise from Within Our Psyche
  • The Overlooked Factor in Criminal Behavior
  • The Three Amigos of Woe
  • Overcoming Incompetence and Its Miseries
  • Three Great Truths from Psychology
  • The Hidden Cause of Clinical Depression
  • Terrorism and the Death Drive
  • Welcome Aboard the Voyage of Self-Discovery
  • The Bittersweet Allure of Feeling Unloved
  • How Inner Fear Becomes Our Worst Nightmare
  • The Problem with Positive Psychology
  • Respect, Disrespect, and Self-Respect
  • Neither a Procrastinator Nor a Dawdler Be
  • Prose to Shatter Writer’s Block
  • Stop Smoking through Psychological Insight
  • The Secret Allures of Pornography
  • How Deeper Awareness Can Eliminate Shame
  • When Sexual Desire Covers Up Self-Sabotage
  • The Dreary Distress of Boredom
  • Problem Gamblers are Addicted to Losing
  • The Tyrant that Rules Our Inner Life
  • The Negative Emotions Behind Addictions
  • Beware the Limitations of Superficial Psychology
  • Get Rid of Guilt with Deeper Insight
  • Riding the Emotional Wave of Turbulent Times

Article Archives



Copyright © 2025 WhyWeSuffer