The Ultimate Guide to Find Love
Breakups can be hard.
I know, I’ve had my fair share of relationships gone south. Be it a 3-year relationship or a 3-month romance, it is all just as hard. But as you grow older, and a little bit wiser — these breakups become bearable.
Once you see a breakup as a lesson learned instead of an end of the world, things get better faster. Your tolerance to heartaches become higher. Your ways to cope up with lost loves become smarter, less dramatic over the course of time. From what used to be a heart-wrenching obstacle, now just becomes a momentary hardship. Something that passes along as you live your day to day life.
The learning curve in finding or getting over a love can be better. You can actually be more strategic in finding the right love for you — that kind of love that leads you to better, happier places with a loving partner.
The secret mantra is: love yourself before anyone else.
Quite cliche, I know.
But bear with me. Once you learn that love is not just the kind of love you see in romcoms, you realize that love is already within us. It is there for you to take. It’s always been there, only if you allow it. Love surrounds us infinitely. Love is when your cat purrs. When your friends send thoughtful Instagram memes. When your mom cooks your favorite dish. When your boss tells you to take a day-off because you’re feeling sad. When you see how the 8 AM ray goes through the leaves and create a beautiful dance with the sunshine. When you find a certain stillness when thanking the Divine for the life you have. Be aware that you are always surrounded with love. After you are aware, then you can start allowing it to go beyond your walls. Remember, you ARE love.
Okay. I (think) I love myself enough. I want someone to share it with. Now what?
Before even starting, let’s take a step back and take a look at the goal: finding love.
What the fuck is love, anyway?
According to the chapter Untangling Love in Intimate Communion, love is described as something that opens your heart. So, love itself is universal. You can love your cat, your mom, your spouse, your boyfriend, your ex-boyfriend, your boss, your mailman, the sky, the sun, the full moon. As long as it opens your heart, then that is love. And love is infinite.
So why is love described so differently in books and movies? There’s a very thin line between love and romance. Romance is when you find that one person you thought you knew your whole life. That fluttery feeling as if you have found the one. Romance is when you find a certain feeling of familiarity, that feeling of oneness and coming home.
But, this is where it gets tricky.
Romance does not necessarily equal to love. Love is always around, unconditional, and infinite, but romance, it wears out.
Knowing what kind of love you want (or do not want)
Society has a lot of definitions of love. What we perceive from love reflects what we want out of it. Disney movies taught me that love at first sight ends up in a walk down the aisle. Rom-com movies taught me that true love has to do with crazy coincidences or serendipity. Married friends taught me that love is full of sacrifices. Fitzgerald taught me that throwing bigass parties to impress that girl you fell in love with in your 20s who happens to be married and lives across your mansion, is a form of love. I don’t blame society. I blame my way of perceiving what kind of love I want (or at least I thought I wanted).
Eight years of puppy loves, bad breakups and casual flings refines and reconstructs what I want out of a relationship. Once you see each heartbreak as a lesson learned, that’s where you realize that everything happens for a reason.
When I was 16, my idea of the ideal boyfriend is very limiting. He needs to have a great sense of music. He needs to be very literate that I can talk about anything I have in mind and have deep, yet out of this world conversations over coffee. He needs to have a great set of teeth. That was my swipe-right criteria.
This obviously did not work out well.
Guys with good sense of music does not mean he will have a good sense of what he/you want. Guys who read a thousand books will never be able to read your mind. Guys with a good set of teeth does not mean he will make you smile.
So, what do you truly want?
Before you start getting to know other people, get to know yourself. What would make you happy? List all the things that are important to you, prioritize it and make it lean — then you’ll know for sure what you truly want.
If you have a slight idea of all the things that might make you happy, ask this. Can you become that ideal partner you described? Will it be fair if you ask for a loyal partner if you yourself cannot be loyal? If you seek for love, then you must also think, feel, act like you are worthy of love. Because you are, we all are worthy of being loved.
As of now, my new set of non-negotiable criteria in finding love:
- Enthusiastic about life —be it a hobby, a certain goal, or generally an optimist
- Loves to learn and well-read — knows enough that he does not know everything
- Smiles a lot (with or without a great set of teeth) —because happiness is contagious!
I’ll probably continue updating this little journey in finding love once I have found mine. Meanwhile, I’ll enjoy dating myself, or even start dating other people, when I’m ready. At least now I am fully aware that I deserve the best kind of true love. And so do you.
