When somebody tells me they're "searching" for love, only my good manners keep me from laughing.
I have no problem with "love." I have a problem with "searching."
Why? Because attaching the search metaphor to something as large as love guarantees the project fails in advance.
Let me explain.
People wander the lonely fields of the apps and the modern meat market, and they hurt. They despair. I don't mock them — I have enormous sympathy. The pain of loneliness is a terrible pain.
But that pain breeds an unrealistic fantasy: the fantasy of FINDING love. By that broken logic, you search and search for something "suitable," and the moment you find it — troubles over. Frustrations over. You can finally rest, fool around, love, and locate a scenic beach to walk along into the sunset.
Any connection between that scenario and a real relationship is as sturdy as a flower stem in a night storm.
People imagine "finding a relationship" as immediate entry into an amusement park — a sharp transition from constant misery to steady bliss.
I suggest they think of it instead as a major promotion into management.
Why? Because from now on it gets more interesting — and much more loaded.
Entering a relationship, exactly like being bumped up to team lead, means becoming dramatically more exposed to outside eyes.
When you were single and "free," even if the acid of loneliness ate at you, at least you answered to no one. Nobody watched you 24/7. You never had to fit your small, intimate habits to someone else's rhythm.
Now the party's over. Used to smoking by the window and using a mug as an ashtray? Done. Used to closing every day with two-hour soul calls with your best friend? Over.
And that's pocket change compared to the psychological luggage a relationship carries in. Every new partner is a dynamic collection of old pains and unsolved questions, and they hurl those conflicts, with joy and fanfare, straight at the new love in their life.
Self-image issues from what your parents did? You disappear into yourself after sex? Afraid you can't compete with other males? Not at peace with your body?
Welcome to your new, exposed life: your partner will see everything. Ev-ery-thing.
And you will have to talk about it. You will explain yourself and account for yourself as you never have.
The weaker characters among us will flinch, flee, and accuse the partner of "not giving them space." Mostly, that's nonsense. It's a normal process — painful, and growth-making. If you want space, go camp in a desert.
If you want a real bond that answers the terrifying question of existential loneliness, you'd better wave goodbye to serious chunks of your precious space — and quickly.
Why agree to this dark bargain? Simple: you and I both know the alternative is worse.
One more thing. All those small habits, the private rituals you keep with religious devotion — they are not who you are. You are bigger than that. Your soul is bigger than that.
A human mind aches to grow. I've believed that all my life. But in the same breath I'll be the first to shout: growth involves pain. Moving toward a more mature inner life always carries measured doses of suffering under its wings.
Let me tell you a secret.
Your partner fell in love with you because of who you are now.
But they love you because of who you could become.
Each of us is an unfulfilled promise, and a relationship is one of the most important arenas for realizing human potential.
Like every skill hiding inside you, the road there runs through very hard work.
Daily work.