The exhausting reality of waiting for ‘The One’.
- Kristina Kotouckova
- Aug 6
- 3 min read
The quiet expectation that never leaves.
It’s always there—the lingering thought, the invisible search.
Even in a crowded room, there’s an eye cast toward the unknown, the potential arrival of someone who might be the one.
We tell ourselves to be patient. That love will happen when it’s meant to. He will appear at the right time. But why? Why do we need to be in a state of anticipation? Why do we feel like something is missing until that one person arrives in our lives?
The illusion of fulfilment through another person.
There’s a societal narrative that subtly convinces us that once love finds us (or we find it), everything else will feel complete. But if we truly believed in our ability to enjoy life without waiting for someone to validate our worth, then that person's absence wouldn’t weigh so heavily on our minds every day ,surely. In the same way, even if a person leaves our lives, it wouldn't disrupt our peace. And the ones who haven't even entered our lives yet wouldn't make us feel like we're incomplete without them.
Yet, reality contradicts this belief, leaving us to continue waiting, searching and hoping no matter how hard we try to distract ourselves in our everyday lives.
Reframing the focus back to ourselves.
What if we shifted our attention away from waiting and toward asking ourselves the questions we want answered? Instead of waiting for someone to create an experience for us, we create it ourselves. Instead of expecting someone to make us feel fulfilled, we do the work to cultivate that fulfilment within.
Because here’s the uncomfortable truth—what if even once they come, they won't fulfil our inner void, or say the loving words that we are longing to hear, or treat us with love and kindness, the way we've been craving to be treated? What if we find ourselves standing next to this perfect person, and yet realise we are the ones asking constantly while they simply exist beside us?
For so long, I thought I knew what love was, what a good relationship feels like. Only to find myself in complete and utter demise, having realised all my past relationships were built on problems, issues and worries.
When people use relationships and connections as bandages for wounds, we have still yet to care for ourselves; we're left bruised and broken, while the other person continues living their life alongside us. But isn't that the way it is supposed to be? We shouldn't go into relationships just to soothe pain. We should want others for who they are, not just for how they can make us feel, by distracting us from our own inner worlds.
The danger of waiting for love to solve loneliness.
We assume that when the right person comes along, we’ll suddenly feel whole. But what if even after they arrive in our lives, the void remains? The reality is, love alone doesn’t erase loneliness. It doesn’t automatically create self-worth. It doesn’t fix wounds we haven’t acknowledged. And placing all of our hope into waiting—waiting for someone to fill the gaps within us—only makes us more disconnected from ourselves in the process.
Learning to stand still without searching.
Patience isn’t the problem. It’s the subtle desperation hidden within patience—the lingering belief that something outside of ourselves must arrive before life can truly begin. But what if we stopped searching altogether? What if we focused on living, creating, thriving—being, so much so that love simply becomes an extension of an already full life, rather than the missing piece?
The exhausting reality of waiting for ‘The One’ ? Final thoughts.
Love should be a choice, not a remedy.
It should be something we welcome, not something we feel incomplete without.
The more we learn to navigate life with ourselves as the priority, the more we develop the ability to step into love freely, without expectation, without searching.
Because the truth is, we were never meant to wait—we are meant to live, and along the way, be met and meet others.
