5 Concrete Signs False Hope Is Ruining Your Love Life

You don’t want to continue chasing after the wrong person or stay stuck in the wrong relationship, because you’re clinging onto the false hope that they are going to change one day and start treating you right. You need to be honest with yourself and admit when the person who has your heart simply isn’t worthy of it. Here are the concrete signs false hope is ruining your love life:

You believe their promises, even though they keep breaking them.

This person keeps getting your hopes up, then disappointing you time and time again. Although they are clearly telling you what you want to hear, then backtracking when it’s time to follow through on their promises, you keep choosing to believe them when they swear this is the last time they’re going to make the same mistake, when they swear they’re going to change. You so badly want to believe that things are going to be different this time that you ignore all the red flags warning you that a happily ever after isn’t going to happen.

You are staying because of their potential, not because of who they are today.

You can’t stay in a relationship with someone who is treating you poorly today because you have your heart set on this perfect, imaginary future with them. Even if you’re right about them changing, you don’t deserve to endure months or years of pain to get to the point where they finally treat you right. You deserve someone who treats you right from the start, who gives you what you deserve without hesitation.

You keep making excuses for their worst behavior.

You don’t even wait for them to give you an explanation for why they’re acting so distant or neglectful. You simply make up your own excuse. You keep giving them the benefit of the doubt over and over again, long after they deserve it. No matter how badly they treat you, you assume there must be a perfectly good explanation. You never even let yourself consider the possibility that they are a bad partner, that you deserve better overall.

You feel like your hard work has to pay off eventually, so you keep sticking around.

You might feel like it’s only a matter of time until this person realizes how wonderful you are and starts treating you better. You might feel like you already invested this much time into your relationship with them so leaving would be a waste. You might feel like you’re owed their love after everything you’ve done for them. But none of this is true. How they’re treating you today is likely how they’ll treat you tomorrow. You can’t assume things will get better over time, especially when they aren’t putting in any noticeable effort to change.

You have been pretending not to notice the red flags.

Since you really want to end up with this person, you have been minimizing their red flags or ignoring them completely — but this will backfire on you eventually. False hope might make you feel better in the moment, but it’s going to ruin your love life overall. It’s going to keep you invested in people who don’t deserve you. People who are never going to give you what you want or make you feel completely happy.