Why Modern Relationships Fail.

Do you find yourself asking why modern relationships are so hard today? We notice there are so many people failing at love every chance that they get. You have to console your best friend numerous times after she gets her heartbroken or you have to convince your boy there is someone else better out there… but all we are doing is avoiding what is truly right in front of us. Today, in the 21st century, why have we forgotten how to love and what love actually is? In this article, I am going to walk you through what’s going on now in our modern relationship world. It’s my hope that this article will be an eye-opener and really point you in the direction of being active and not giving up hope on love. As always, I would love to hear from you about this article, so please don’t hesitate to leave your question in the comments section below.

In today’s day and age, so many people are not prepared to sacrifice and may not even know what that actually means. We think of love as something that should come easily. Love can be easy, it’s true, but our idea of “easy” is not having to invest our time into making a relationship work because we rarely have to invest our time in life. We want everything to come easily. We might not think that we are quitters when it comes to love, but unfortunately, we are. All it takes is a single challenge to frustrate us and make us give up. We don’t let our love grow; we let it go because we compare it to what social media or the internet supplies us with. We are taught our fears are a way to escape and avoid actually working to bond and form a connection with another person. Then, we erase the chances of forming a relationship because we continue to play games and bask in our own fears. Both people end up losing. We want a relationship without the work or risks involved in a real one. We want the hand-holding for a moment, we want the comfort for a moment, we want the affection for a moment, we want the attention for a moment, but we don’t want the work that is required to build a real relationship.

How the obsession with instant gratification damages modern day relationships…

Ultimately, we live our lives just for that moment without really working towards a clear goal. We should be putting aside the games and stepping up to communicate and act on what we truly want. It’s not love we’re looking for; it’s the chase and the thrill of life for that moment. So many of us want someone to Netflix and chill with but the moment someone opens up and shows us vulnerability and their deepest secrets, we run away. Or we say we aren’t ready because…

Sometimes, when a relationship gets to this point, we still continue to be in that moment for the affection, but we avoid the commitment. We just want to fill the void of affection and attention. We spend time together but we don’t make lasting memories. Then the time spent together is immediately interrupted because one of you found someone else that thrills you, or things got “too heavy,” or you continue to say you’re not ready because ultimately that’s the easy route – giving up on love. We let our fears run our love lives. Then we start to compare our past relationships to our new ones because we think that the old negative patterns and fears will appear again in this new relationship. We don’t want that past relationship, that boring life, or an ex-wife to take all our money or an ex-husband to lay a hand on us. Instead, we say we want a relationship but don’t understand that we put out all the energy into not having a life partner – just someone who can make us feel alive for that moment. The moment the excitement fades, we pick up our phones and find someone else.

We now frown upon predictability instead of seeing it as realness, and this results in fragile relationships. We are now so blinded by instant gratification and we continue to seek thrill and adventure by saying, “She’s too predictable” or “He’s too available”  or “I need space.” Predictability is actually just getting to know someone and there is a true beauty behind just that. We immerse ourselves in a comfortable state and bask in the superficial ways of life so we can still be independent and barricade ourselves from vulnerability. We want to keep chasing love but we don’t want to fall into it. We have friends with benefits, comforting relationships, booty calls, go-with-the-flow relationships, dating for 4 months without commitment relationships, you name it, but these are all just based on convenience. We stick with them until we get a new man or woman flirting with us through text message to give the illusion of attraction and feeling wanted.

We look for instant gratification in everything we do. We are so used to it that it effortlessly plays into our love lives. We just have to ask Siri, plug in our address to a GPS, open up a dating app, post on social media, click one button to have our car parallel park for us, listen to that song we have in our mind by one click on iTunes, tell Alexa to order us milk, use our thumbprints to pass security in the airport, not go to the grocery store because now it can be delivered to your door … We live a life in which human interaction is taken out and we are gratified in an instant. We expect the same thing in our love lives so we get easily distracted.

The way we view relationships today is the problem.

Now we believe in “having options” when in reality this is just a bandage to ignore having to do any real work. We’d rather spend an hour each day with a hundred people via social media than spend a day with one. We meet people but we avoid getting to know who they truly are. We find a flaw and say it won’t work instead of encouraging a partnership to bring out the best in that one person. We want them to be perfect because we can be perfect with a tap of a finger on an app. In modern relationships, we might date a lot of people but rarely give them a real chance. We’re a generation in which sex is easy. We love to “hook up” because we want to feel good. Sex comes easily but loyalty doesn’t. Whatever happened to the thrill in the chase and loving deeper? We are a generation living based off fear of love. We are fearful of falling in love and getting hurt, commitment, being with one person, not being good enough, or getting our hearts broken. We blame someone else for their shortcomings when we need to realize that these are walls we created ourselves. The thought of bearing our soul to someone frightens us and we look at vulnerability as a weakness, so we put up this wall. Vulnerability deeply frightens us, but what we need to recognize is the thing that we truly want… The things that we deeply desire, the things that are generally fulfilling, all require patience, work, energy, compassion, self-love, honesty, time, and trust. The challenge is that we want to be with someone who makes us happy when we haven’t found how to make ourselves truly happy. The easy way out is stating we don’t want a relationship… but at the end of the day we actually really, really do.

The only way to change this is by breaking through and no longer letting people look at vulnerability as something scary. When we stop letting the superficial and instant gratification feelings interfere with what we really want, we will experience a breakthrough. Start to take ownership of who you are and understand that relationships don’t just come at the snap of your fingers. In order to create and form an undeniable bond with someone, you have to connect on a deeper level – A soul level. You can’t get to the soul without getting underneath the distractions. If you find yourself being able to relate to this article, I encourage you to take a step back and look at the ways that you are not making an effort to be the best version of you. What are you scared of and what might be holding you back? During my years of coaching, I’ve been able to take clients to a deeper level of what love and relationships are. I’ve worked with them in order to change their reality and vision one step at a time. I say this because as we grow up, love and relationships are not always taught to us and then we are lost when we come into our adulthood. We end up doing the wrong things or adapting to how society portrays modern relationships, but that’s not the answer. The answer is to look inside and make sure you are being honest with yourself. Allow yourself to be honest and become the best version of yourself that you can be. Pay attention to your behaviors and always work towards self-improvement. Knowing how to love is different than understanding how to love. When you have the true understanding of love, you can start to plant the seed for the tree to finally blossom into something spectacular.

The root of that tree starts with you.

So, let me ask you this.

Can you be vulnerable?

Your Love Coach,

Apollonia Ponti

Apollonia Ponti, an international certified coach and founder of apolloniaponti.com. She works with men to attract the woman they desire, build confidence, master their attraction skills and helps rebuild relationships.

You can find her expert advice on “is she using me”, plus a couple other of your core professional services, through her YouTube Channel, and Attract a Woman E-Book. To get real results with women NOW! Change your life and master your attraction. Book a coaching session here.