Finding love is not like winning the lottery.
Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash
Did you know that the world is filled with good, available men and women?
We're inclined to think that finding love is sort of like winning the lottery. I hear my clients say all the time that there aren't enough good men or women out there, that you have to be careful about whom you invest in, that dating is so hard, yadda yadda yadda.
This is simply not true, but it certainly will be your experience if this is what you tell yourself about love.
Here's my experience with dating, love, and relationship:
Finding love is a solo journey. That part has absolutely nothing to do with anyone else. That has to do with you finding your own source of love from inside of you. No one else can do that work for you, whether you're already in a relationship, or whether you're currently single. Repeat after me: THIS IS YOUR JOB.
Beyond that, relationship requires actual skill that most people don't have. As tragic as that truth is, I'm delighted to inform you that most people I know are out looking to acquire those skills from a genuine, authentic place. See above about all the good, available men and women in the world.
Here are some (non-exhaustive) essential skills you need in order to make ANY relationship high quality: Learning to slow down, learning to put your undivided attention on someone, learning to be present, learning to trust the innate goodness of another person, learning to trust yourself, learning to not take things personally, learning to ask for what you need rather than expecting someone to read your mind, learning to have difficult conversations without losing your shit, learning to be yourself (which requires you knowing who you are PRIOR to getting into the relationship), learning to be curious, learning to sit with the discomfort of another person learning all these things with you, learning to actually be compassionate to the fact that you are not the only human with complex needs and fears and desires in the relationship.
They don't teach this stuff in school you guys (and yeah, I tend to agree that they should).
Most of what makes people feel all those scary things about relationships stems from an acute (and perhaps unconscious) awareness that we *lack* these tools to navigate basic connection.
So we seek out the wrong types of relationships: the ones that we think will require the least work and that will keep us the most safe. We look for partners who will be complicit in our life choices, rather than actually available for profound levels of connection that create anchoring and sexual charge and joy and pleasure and trust and devotion in connection.
And, that's getting worse the more we attempt to use the internet to fulfill our connection needs rather than face-to-face human interaction.
BUT THIS CAN BE RESOLVED, MY LOVES. It really can.
I want so badly for you to know how ecstatic this sort of relationship can be that I'm going to share two tools with you that are fundamental to making relationship work WELL with ANYONE:
AWE: make your goal, in every connection you have, to touch awe by any means necessary. Ask questions you think you're not supposed to ask, wonder about the weird, the strange, the taboo, and especially the things you think learning about might hurt your feelings. Wonder about the mystery of the universe as it exists in another human. Create space for unrelenting truth in your connection and allow yourself to be awe-struck by all of it.
THE PAUSE BUTTON: This one is key if you tend to be the sensitive type or the avoidant type or the type who likes to control shit (and also all other types not mentioned). When you feel your heart start to race, or your palms sweat, or the fierce anger boiling up from your belly, or your stomach tense or your shoulders wrap up around your ears, or you feel a compulsion to do anything rash like disappear and never come back: hit that pause button. Learn to say to your partner: "I'm feeling activated right now and I need a minute to regroup before we continue."
Then go out and EXPERIENCE connection and intimacy and learn as you go and remember that no one is perfect at any of this ever, not even the masters and gurus.
Okay, good chat. Love you guys. <3