“I don’t think I’m cut out to be in a relationship. No matter what I do, it never works out,” she said before taking a sip of her wine. Then, shaking her head, “I can’t keep doing this. I just think I’m one of those people who’s meant to be alone. I need to accept that.”

Sam said the words with conviction. However, the look on her face told a far different story. After feigning happiness in a marriage that had been deteriorating for years, a drawn-out divorce that eventually followed and which should’ve been resolved a lot sooner had she used a different lawyer, and dealing with teenage drama over the years since with her kids as a result of her split with their father, Sam had had enough. She wanted to be with someone who’d appreciate her and who she felt attracted to and liked.

So far, no man had come close, and the few false starts and stops with men she thought were right had taken their toll. “I’m afraid of being let down again,” Sam confided. “After investing so much time into someone and then not having it work out, well, that’s why people get dogs.” She laughed.

I didn’t. This was no laughing matter. Sure, a dog was a safer bet. But I already knew enough about Sam to know a dog wouldn’t be the addition to her life she really wanted. I’d known Sam for a long time. A friend of a friend, we’d met a few times at parties and gotten to talking. She was great, and I wanted to help her. But first, she had to let me, and that was going to be the trickiest part since she had lost hope somewhere along the way.

Hopelessness is an undesirable feeling to have, so when we experience it, myself included, the usual inclination is to take away the pain feeling hopeless causes as fast as we can. The way we do this is to avoid the things or people who could cause us pain instead of facing the reasons why we’re behaving as we are.

For Sam, her fear was of getting close to someone and then having her heart broken by them. Her heart had already been broken when her marriage ended, and even though she had gone out on lots of dates since becoming single, she feared it happening again. The answer for her was to find fault with everyone who crossed her path. Of course, perception is reality. It was the reason why she believed there was no one out there for her.

This is a common sentiment among singles, especially at middle age, after having lived enough years to face a divorce, death of a spouse, multiple breakups, rejection, job losses, failed businesses, or any other disruption. The losses are tangible, and they hurt.

But what we don’t necessarily realize is that we hang onto those losses because they hurt. The hurt is our protection. We’re afraid of being hurt again, and past hurts are what keep others away. Past hurt is what also keeps us from facing the person staring back at us in the bathroom mirror each morning, the person with a few more wrinkles than the last time we looked, graying hair, and a body we no longer recognize.

That image, too, is perception, not reality. True, the scale doesn’t lie, and neither does the colorist at the hair salon who covers the grey. As for our brains? They can be pathological liars if we allow them to be, causing us to reflect negatively about why we are where we are in life: Why have things turned out this way? Where did we go wrong? What could we have done differently?

The answer is maybe nothing. Or maybe everything. But, really, what does it matter now?

Instead, ask yourself these questions: Is it possible I was meant to be exactly where I am right now, and do I really think there’s not something larger at work here, whether God or the universe, which helped bring me to this point?

If you answered yes to either of these questions or, at a minimum, they caused you to think, then you’ve tapped into what we commonly call faith. Faith is the understanding that we’re not alone and, because of that, faith can be the strongest support system we know. In dating, that can come in handy because, let’s face it, dating is a game of chance in which there’s always a risk of getting hurt.

But what dating also is is a game of chances, opportunities to open another door when the one behind it closes. But to have these chances, you have first to take a chance, which requires a leap of faith. Look before you do, but do leap. The faith you have in something larger than yourself and, because of that, in yourself will catch you should you fall. And lift you up, so you don’t.