When Finding Love Feels Hopeless

Have you ever felt hopeless in your pursuit of love?

Maybe it’s time to give up.

My friend had an affair. He cut off the relationship with his mistress and tried to save his marriage. It didn’t happen. He and his wife divorced. Now he tells me he has given up on ever finding a healthy relationship with a woman. 

Whether we are married or divorced or dating, we have all, at times, probably reached the point where we want to give up. 

Finding a good love seems hopeless. It’s too much trouble, too much effort. 

The only problem with this is that we, as humans made in the image of God, are made to love. After my own divorce and annulment, I often felt I would be just as happy being single the rest of my life rather than going through the trouble of trying to find someone new. Yet I still wanted to love and be loved by someone.

Some of us may never find that one special relationship we desire. Some, especially my older friends, have made peace with that. They are content to be single and that can be a good thing. 

Being in a relationship or not being in a relationship is no indicator of our worth or ability to be happy.

Even so, God said in Genesis 2:18: “It is not good for the man to be alone.” He made us to live in community. For some, this will mean marriage. For others, it may be a community of a different sort: family, religious life, or something else.

Either way, as much as we want to give up on love, we really can’t.

God made us to love and we have to give it, and receive it, somewhere.

Nearly a decade after my divorce and annulment, I met a good woman and we started dating. After three months, I cut it off. I was too used to being on my own. I wanted to stay safe and I was scared to love again. That didn’t last long. 

The woman and I stayed in touch through Facebook and texts. A few months after our breakup, we met in person for drinks and a movie. When she walked in the door of the wine shop, her beauty struck me and I enjoyed the warmth of her presence. 

Who was I kidding? I wanted to be with her. I just had to heal from past wounds and find the courage to risk loving again.

God brought a book into my life at this time that helped me. It was Donald Miller’s Scary Close. In it, Miller, who married for the first time in middle age, says: “I’ve come to believe a person’s love for you can’t grow unless you hold that person loosely.”

Hold them loosely? This seems counterintuitive. Aren’t we supposed to cling desperately to the object of our affection? 

But only by holding someone loosely can we really ever hold them at all in any real way. No matter how much we love another, we will all die some day. In the end, we belong to God and to God we will return. You never own another human being. You love them the best you can, without trying to control them or believing they will somehow complete you.

This insight set me free. Me and this woman agreed to start dating again. 

We risked loving, invested time in each other, and did not idolize our relationship as something that would save us both. 

Three years later, we are married. 

In his book, Miller also observed: “Perhaps that’s another reason true intimacy is so frightening. It’s the one thing we all want, and must give up control to get.”

There are those words: Give up.

That’s what we have to do. Not give up the hope of ever finding love and happiness.

But give up that hope to God. 

Don’t cling to it. Surrender it to the One who wants what’s best for you. “God is greater than our hearts and knows everything” (1 John 3:20).

In his song “Give Up”, Christian musician Andrew Osenga sings:

Help me give it up

These distractions don’t love us

To surrender is trust

There’s a hand reaching out

God is reaching out, inviting us to give up our hopes and longings and frustrations to him. I found that only by giving up was I able to risk loving again. 

So, if you are feeling discouraged or hopeless, I encourage you to give up. Trust God with your desires. As he says in 2 Corinthians 12:9: “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” 

Be weak. Trust God. Give up.