I knew a woman who so longed to be loved, held, and not feel lonely that she gave her lover, a man who she had only recently met and knew to be a criminal, all of her life savings—some $43,000, to be exact. He promised that he would give the money back with interest (along with his abiding love) in two short months.

She had a small child to feed and had just lost her job—and, incidentally, two other boyfriends just like this one—but she trusted him primarily because “he believed in Karma.”

Over the next several months, she heard from him only once. When she began to inquire about his whereabouts, she learned that he had died in an automobile accident and had left behind a young widow and three small children. When she told a friend what she had discovered, her friend asked what she had learned. “He died in the car he bought with my money.”

This is an extreme example of what can happen when you are lonely but haven’t developed the inner resources to give yourself the good feelings that you are seeking from someone else.

I get it. I’ve been there, too. I had a string of relationship disasters that I believed were the result of some dark fate, bad luck, or perhaps my difficult childhood. I married a man who I hoped would complete me (spoiler: it didn’t work). My role models and friends were no better off. My failed marriage and relationships fell like a line of dominoes over the years, all to the Western tune of: “That rotten, no good, cheating son of a…, and he even took the dog!”