Struggling through an era of consumerism.

If you would ask your parents about their dating life back when computers and cellphones were yet to be invented, believe it or not, their stories would be far less complex and merely as entertaining as yours. Indeed, the human species has evolved and so has its dating standards. We have entered into an era of consumerism of not  only food, but also sex and relationships. We are interconnected. We have access to our boss’s online dating photos (because we’re using the same apps) and we go on dates with the same consistency and rigour as we go to work. Date after date after date, some of us succeed to settle down, whilst others end up paying tons of money for a shrink to tell them to switch to better performing apps, and to sign up to social activities, such as art, photography, and wine tasting classes. Seriously? Yup, Seriously. As a result, businesses flourish, dating apps make even more money, and so do gyms and PR firms.

Looking for love in the wrong places.

Alright, I might be a teensy bit overdramatic, but the underlying truth is there. I can see it by my single girlfriends, who pick up nightclubs in function to their male frequentation, and who sign up to the gym with the sole purpose of finding a soulmate. I don’t judge, as my own mother had the nerve to suggest me with a high-end gym when I was in my mid-twenties, because she was too worried about me being single. I have also experienced a few dating apps following a bad break-up, which got me more depressed than the break-up itself. I only went on a few dates. The first one ended up being a midget (which was impossible to detect by his good-looking, above-waste, profile photos) and the last one was a drug-addict, who stood up and left because I didn’t agree upon his “substance abuse” point of view. So how is it even possible that with all of this interconnectedness so many of us are feeling lonely and out of love? Maybe because we’re looking for love in all of the wrong places?

Inner wounds and shattered souls.

I’m not sponsored for any of my blogs, so I’m not going to list the right dating apps for you to use, nor will I list the activities for you to do or the places for you to go to, to find love. Because in my opinion, the only place to find love is “within”. Although, somehow we’ve detoured ourselves to the outside world. Maybe because it’s easier for us to focus our attention onto others, rather than to look for love within ourselves. Maybe the problem lies in our inner weaknesses, fears and past karma. Maybe our parents divorced, abandoned us, molested us, or maybe as kids we were ridiculed and hurt. What if our soul was shattered into pieces during certain traumatic life events, be it during childhood or adulthood, leaving us feeling incomplete? Maybe our focus should lie upon collecting those pieces and glueing them back together, in order for us to feel complete again? Maybe before this inner work is done, no matter how hard we will look for love in others, it will forever be out of our reach?

Not losing myself in love, until it happens again.

Until the age of 23 I’ve been the happiest person on earth – preaching that I didn’t need love to be happy because I was infinitely happy on my own. Until one day, love knocked me off my feet so bad, that it took me years to recover. And when I say recover, I mean date other people in order to forget about the shattered pieces of my heart that needed healing. The others couldn’t heal me. Only I could. Although, it took me years to come to this realisation. Once I have finally managed to heal my broken parts, ‘self-love’ became my driving force, and ‘not losing myself in love’, my motto. 

Love waits in the shadows.

Beware, I’m speaking from experience – love does find us in the most unexpected ways and in the most astonishing places. It waits for us in the shadows, until we put our guard down, until we stop looking for it, and only then does it strike us in the most dramatic and unexpected of ways.  Indeed, through age and time I have come to a deep realisation – the more actively we look for love, the more actively it escapes us. Just like anything else in life. Pay close attention, and you will see that whenever you will want something too hard, you will automatically create an invisible barrier to it, and that something, will become completely out of your reach.

So maybe it’s time for you to stop looking for a ‘perfect mate’ and to start creating a ‘perfect you’ instead? 

Photo 1 by Everton Vila on Unsplash