Where is the best place to find true love? Source: ThinkStock

But sometimes it’s hard to keep your eyes open to the possibilities that cross your path. If you’re not looking with wide-open eyes and listening with wide-open ears, you could be missing out on a love that’s right under your nose.

If you want to know where to look for love, if you’re finding the search for love endless, frustrating or fruitless, try to open your eyes to people you may not have considered before. A slow-burn romance with someone you’ve known for ages is just as likely to last as the lightning strike of a new attraction and it may take you out of your love comfort zone.

Real love is always a challenge to the way we think things are or ought to be.

On a trip back home to see my family, my mother told me how she’d bumped into one of our old neighbours and that he’d told her about what a huge crush he’d had on me when we were teenagers. I was so shocked. I’d been mad keen on him back when we lived across the street from each other, and so flustered by my attraction, that I could barely speak if we met in the street. I’d believed with heartbreaking teenage certainty that he was way out of my league. He’d told my mother that he thought I was so uninterested in him that I didn’t even bother saying hello.

My inner voices were so loud that I couldn’t see what was right in front of me. I was blind, deaf, dumb and afraid.

Haven’t you had moments like that, when you missed out on an opportunity for love because you didn’t think it was possible? Times when you consciously or unconsciously dismissed someone because they didn’t fit your idea of what you deserved? Or maybe you didn’t notice them because they were in a place you didn’t expect to find them. Maybe they were serving you a coffee or giving your cat a needle or teaching you first aid and you just let them go because it never even crossed your mind that you could step towards them and see if they would take your hand.

I was at a wedding on the weekend and a tiny girl came up and asked me to dance. She just took my hand and pulled me onto the dance floor. Her dad was a bit mortified and began to apologise for her being so forward. I told him I hoped that she never lost the confidence to ask people to dance. What I really hope is that he doesn’t teach her to be ashamed of reaching out for what she wants. She had her eyes wide open, and if she was afraid of rejection or of my lack of dance floor magic, she didn’t let that get in the way of the possibility of dancing.

The important thing to remember is that wherever you are, and whatever you’re doing, be open to seeing who’s in front of you. And try not to let your fears of what might happen, and your ideas of what should happen, blind you to what is actually happening.

So go out there and open your eyes! In the dog park across the sea of swirling mutts, over an organised singles dinner, in the queue at the post office, speed dating, at a rally, festival, the footy or your friend’s barbecue.

Do your best to give your full attention to the people around you. You might just see someone you’ve never really seen before. Whether it’s someone you’ve known forever, or someone you’ve just met, love is often right there in front of you. You just have to have your eyes open enough to see it.

Zoe Krupka is a psychotherapist with experience in relationship counselling.

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