What IS self-awareness? It's frequently monitoring your actions, thoughts and behaviors and asking yourself, "is it productive or life-enhancing for me to be doing this?"
The average person (which is most of us) never checks-in this way with themselves. They carry-on thru life seeking immediate results, instant gratification, and wishing for a better reality, but have not bothered to identify the reasons why they can't achieve it.
"Familiarity breeds contempt" is an old saying that generally applies to romantic relationships~ but it might also apply to your bond with yourself, unless you've done the diligent work it takes to build a nourishing, friendly, interactive experience with YOU.
The opposite of self-awareness is denial. Denial means we choose not to see aspects of ourselves we've come to judge as unacceptable or unsavory (usually in others), and we keep those parts well-hidden from our consciousness. Other people might see these facets in us quite clearly, but we cannot. It feels too shameful to own these parts within us, and so we don't.
Sensible, meaningful, effective therapeutic work holds up a mirror to you regarding what needs changing and pulls your covers off~ rather than allowing you to maintain dysfunctional behaviors, thought patterns and beliefs. It deliberately challenges your defenses to shred your denial, so that you're able to SEE where you need significant work, and determine IF you're courageous enough to accept AND pursue real change in yourself.
Psychotherapy cannot be counted on to do this. Standard therapies aren't invested in reconstructing you~ they merely wanna help you feel okay about yourself week to week. But is that ENOUGH? Can you rely on and trust that lasting change can occur in yourself within this paradigm?
I've had clients say, how can you think it helps me, when you point out these aspects? Is this supposed to make me feel better?? For decades, my work was NEVER about helping people "Feel Better." My approach was to help my clients learn how to feel EVERYTHING, so they would not remain dissociated from themselves.
You cannot remain dissociated from your own emotions (however intense OR subtle they may be) and successfully associate with another human being~ no matter HOW "healthy" they are! If you're disconnected from your (primary) relationship with you, it's utterly impossible to fully connect with another, because you're bringing a severely limited, one-dimensional 'being' to the party.
It isn't that plenty of people don't TRY to surmount this obstacle, mind you~ it's that they are never successful at building and maintaining a nourishing, mutually respectful, loving relationship bond with anyone, despite the amount of optimism and Wishful Thinking that precedes it.
I'm not wishing to deflate your high hopes of ever finding true love. I'm merely stating that if your love affair with YOU hasn't solidified itself first and foremost, your chances of it working out with somebody else, are slim to none.