Is this an impossible conversation?
Yeah, probably because love love, love.
We ache for it, we'll give anything for it.
Yes, you and me sometimes, i guess, but we're gonna have this conversation today okay hiya, i just wanted to ask you what if you never find love?
That's a really deep question.
It's very hard to answer, but it's a question that often crosses my mind, actually.
I feel like life is a bit useless without love.
But if I didn't have to find love and I just have to live without it, then I guess my next thing is just bettering myself every day.
That's it.
You know, if you find it, you find it.
And if you don't, it's not meant to be.
Never really thought about it, but just focusing on my goals.
At one point in my life, I'd love to have a family and stuff.
When I was young.
I was raised up in a family that they only gave me a lot of wealth, but there's really few, very few amount of love.
So I got like diagnosed with like medium level of anxiety.
I think it's more about like not having enough love.
I think I'm the kind of person who need need love to maintain, like my function.
I got an email a little while back and I could feel the deep yearning in it.
The deep desperation.
This heartbreak.
Rising desperation.
This person didn't sound like they lacked self-love.
It seemed they had friends and a sense of purpose.
They weren't asking me to save them.
They just wanted to know how they could rid themselves of this haunting desire.
This desire that consistently disappointed them.
The desire to love and be loved by a romantic partner.
Now, Hold up, okay?
Is this the part where I try to convince you that finding romance, or finding your person or the one, isn't all that it's cranked up to be?
Or that all these other beautiful and equally necessary forms of love can take its place friendship creativity, spiritual connections, community.
No.
Listen, three things.
One, I already vomited an essay deconstructing our obsession with the concept of the one, duh.
Two, I'm not here to lie to you, okay?
And three, I don't wanna trick you out of your longing.
I want us to honour it.
And to do that, we must first address the myth the legend.
From tiny humanhood we imbibe stories, fairy tales movies songs, casual conversations, cultural expectations that point to one larger-than-life conclusion.
Romantic love is the crowning achievement of human life, the pinnacle of belonging, the thing that makes it all make sense.
So it's no surprise that a chunk of us live our entire lives measuring our worth by our proximity to Romans.
Even when we have deep friendships, even when we have creative fulfillment, career fulfillment, self-knowledge and joy, we feel like something essential is missing.
Like something is wrong with our lives.
We don't see singlehood as a valid state of being, but as an incomplete one.
But you know what's funny?
The one thing we have failed to acknowledge over and over again is reality.
Reality.
Yes, love is incredibly beautiful, but being coupled doesn't innately erase your loneliness or fix your story.
It just gives you another flawed, complicated human being who you get to try to live it out with.
And that trying and failing is what we call heartbreak, okay?
Have you ever wondered why most romantic movies and love stories end on a high note?
When everybody's kissing under the stars and dancing under the lights and then riding into the sunset into the ether and is happy ever after.
That's because relationships are a constant negotiation between fantasy and reality, between who people imagine they'll be together and who they actually are together.
You don't get to see the mess, and this is what makes the myth dangerous.
Dangerous okay, and most of us aren't searching for love.
We are looking for a specific story about it.
Pearl sh your mouth.
I know what i want.
I want real love.
Okay, i'm on your side if you want a relationship, if you want a romantic relationship.
Pretending you don't want it is not going to help you.
Trying to get rid of the feeling is only going to cause you more pain.
But at the same time, chasing it like it is everything is also making you miserable.
Your desire is not the problem.
It's human, it's valid, it's universal.
Quite frankly, you know that's special.
Okay, You're not special in this desire.
A lot of us want love.
It shouldn't have to haunt you.
It shouldn't have to take over your entire existence.
It shouldn't torment you.
I think I found out why, though.
Trust me, bro.
Now, the answer lies in your management plan, okay?
Think of it this way.
Let's say you were suddenly diagnosed with a chronic condition.
So you get this new diagnosis.
There's no cure in sight.
But knowing the pace of technology, knowing how medical advancement works, there might be one in five years, 30 years or never.
Who knows?
Of course, you're going to be sad, mad and bad.
You're going to be distraught, angry.
You know all the adjectives.
You're going to feel all these feelings.
But chances are you are going to want to know what next.
What can I do to manage my relationship with this condition so that it doesn't completely take me out of my life?
Yes, it will be there and it might suck a lot, but is there something I can do to get to a place where I can still find happiness and enjoyment in my life?
And there, there my love is the shit.
You are suddenly inviting curiosity amidst the fear.
What next?
That is the question.
What if I never find love becomes if I don't find love, what then?
What kind of person will I be?
What kind of life will I still choose to create?
It's not about your desire, it's about how you hold it.
Step one.
Mourn.
You know that I am a massive fan of grieving, a huge fan, and I know it's cliche, I know, but stay with me.
There's a picture of a life you have in your head where you were supposed to be.
What is supposed to be happening right now?
Okay,
Grieve that fantasy.
That imagined timeline.
Maybe you thought that by now you'll have two kids, somewhere, I don't know.
You would have travelled the world with your lover.
Maybe this, maybe that, maybe that film you watched as a kid is still in your mind.
Darling, grieve it.
And no, this is not a pity party.
This is about respect, about acknowledging your own humanity, the weight of your desire.
You can't transcend what you refuse to feel. what you refuse to tell the truth about.
The vision of love you want hasn't come.
So cry about it, rage about it, write about it, chat about it, exercise about it, do whatever you need to do about it so that you can create space to inhabit the life which you actually have.
Step two.
Perchance, beloved, Are you catastrophizing?
Hmm?
Listen.
What if I never find love?
What if no one ever loves me?
What if no one ever, ever, ever finds me the way I find them, looks at me the way I look at them?
What if I never find the right person?
Are these really questions about love itself?
Or is it just a cover for your fear of being unseen, unheld, unimportant, unchosen?
Because, my dear, my darling, to tell you the truth though, You're just single now.
And I don't know how that suddenly leads to I will die alone.
You don't know that.
Like it's not a proportionate reaction.
It's not a proportionate conclusion.
Life is dynamic.
It's changing every freaking second.
Everything, everywhere, all at once.
That you're single today doesn't mean you'll be in two years.
And, by the way, that you're coupled and partnered today Doesn't mean your relationship will survive this economy.
Am I being a hater?
Maybe, but I'm telling the truth.
Okay?
With the way this economy is moving.
Good luck.
Okay?
We don't know.
Unless you have a history of predicting the future accurately must be accurate, then I stand corrected.
But if you don't know what will happen tomorrow, to the T, I don't want to hear it.
We really don't be knowing, bruh.
So when your brain or your mind begins to catastrophize, then you must ask the question when I say love, what do I really mean?
Is it what if I never found safety?
What if no one ever witnesses me?
What if I never get validation?
Sometimes what we actually crave is not a person.
It's a feeling of being met, being known, being seen, being understood.
Our minds attach this longing.
Our minds attach the solution to the concept of the one.
Of course, understanding this is not going to erase your desire for partnership.
I know.
I know.
But it might just help you identify the areas of your life where you need healing in.
Because there are so many ways to be matched, validated, seen, held.
If you're losing sleep and waking up in panic, then you won't find love.
There's an imbalance.
Step three.
The game plan.
This is where we make the plan.
And plans are personal.
Sometimes love as we wish it just doesn't happen.
You know why?
Because it's not an entitlement.
It's not a reward.
It's not proof of anything.
Life is random and stunningly unpredictable and this makes it sometimes very, very unfair.
That combo makes it deeply unfair.
It's not uncommon to see the worst of the worst kind.
And yes, you just thought about somebody, okay?
I'm not alone in this.
We know there are some people we look at and we're like, how?
Always in relationships.
That is all the proof.
You need to know that you don't have to be healed enough to be in a relationship.
You don't have to be that great of a person to be in a relationship.
It's a numbers game.
It's a luck game, random game, game, cities game, where you live game.
Values game.
Did you go out on that day game?
It really can be so random sometimes.
So what are you going to do going forward?
Beyond the waiting, what is your plan B?
Like, in what ways can you participate more in life?
What art could you make?
What pleasures could you explore?
What senses are yet to awaken within you?
What trips haven't you taken?
What friendships could you deepen?
What career could you build, baby?
What other forms of family and community could you explore, pursue?
What parts of your city haven't you explored?
Yes, there are endless possibilities for Plan Bs and C's and D's and E's and F's and G's and H's and I's and J's yes, J's and K's.
Who says A always has to be the best?
Who says it?
A is just a plan.
If it fails, go to B. You know, we hear this all the time.
People say things like, oh, I found love when I stopped searching.
I just wasn't looking and love found me.
I think what they're really trying to say, what they really mean, is I found love when I started living.
And no, this isn't a guarantee, no.
This isn't a promise of anything.
But since everything changes all the time, just in case You know, per adventure, per chance, love wanders into your life at any given time.
I hope he finds you living in a way that makes love recognisable.
When he arrives, I hope that you would have built a life that it could fit into.
And you know what's funny?
You know what is funny?
Love always arrives. just not always in the way we dreamt it to, not in the forms we often expect.
If you stop narrowing your definition of love, I promise you you would see it moving through your life like water.
You would notice how constantly it moves through your day, through your body, how much it exists in your eyes, in your space.
I won't tell you to stop wanting it.
That's crazy.
That's unfair, okay?
But if you never find romantic love, I'll tell you what will happen.
You will live.
Yeah.
You will live.
You'll build a life so textured, so full of meaning, that it becomes your own great love story.
Darling, at the end of the day, love is something you are.
I hope you never forget.
I think that sometimes we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to find the one, find a relationship that's going to magically make us this whole person, and we need to kind of think bigger than that.
I'm a big believer that there's no single person in your life that completes who you are as a person, and sometimes as well, people expect that you're going to find love by 20 or, if you've not found love by 30, or suddenly this misfit that's never going to find anything, and I think we need to strip all that back, that actually, I've met people who are in their 50s and 60s, like my wonderful mum who met the person that she's truly in love with and her fiance over 50, and she always thought she'd be a single mum and never find anyone.
So I really think that there's no pressure.
We're not pints of milk, we're not going to expire, it's not a question of time, that's all.
Keep looking, you'll find love.
It's impossible not to find love, because we are literally love, and I don't feel like it should be put into one particular thing, like People like to put love with men or with relationships.
And I genuinely don't believe that.
I go through life now without love from a man.
But I'm satisfied because I know I have the love from my family and my sisters.
And that's what just keeps me going.
And you find love with your friendship, your female friendships, platonic friendships.
Love is everywhere.
You just have to know that.
It comes from you.
I think if you don't find love, you should turn the love in your heart to the world outside and the things that you do.
Because I found love through fostering dogs.
So my dog really loves me and I love him.
It might be a different type of love, but it's still love.
It's up to you if you don't want to be seen.
