Dear dating community,
Dating, falling in and out of love, and finding and losing companionship almost cost me my life! Since my late elementary school interest in girls, I’ve always used love, or the dream of love, as a way to hide the bad wiring in my brain, which in turn made me the quarter-ton man that I was. I actually thought that love could fix all problems. “All you need is love,” right? I even got to the point that when women stopped loving me, I would actually love them more to make up for the deficit. I can now admit that this vicious cycle became so awful that it caused me to weigh the value of my own life on a number of occasions, followed by the indescribable hell of deciding if I had the nerve to put my pain to an ultimate end.
That said, I have loved and still love dating, especially first dates. There is nothing better than meeting a person on some intimate level and having the opportunity to share a little piece of you with someone else. It is an opportunity to sell yourself, learn new and interesting things, and share thoughts and feelings that wouldn’t normally be shared in a group setting. Because so much information is being exchanged, every date is an incredible opportunity to learn something new about yourself. There is nothing more refreshing than shining a light on some aspect of your identity which puts you one step closer to definitively stating who you are as an individual.
With my love for the "art of seduction" in mind, I have to say that I’m a big fan of yours! You have so many incredible qualities that make you special. Because of my “fan-ness,” it would mean so much to see you find happiness. You see, I have a great deal of experience in this department because both my parents could be considered “serial-re-marriers!” Somewhere along the line, my parents lost sight of the emotional driving force behind their instinct for companionship. I think something happened to each of them that caused them to date in an attempt to fill self-perceived holes in their individual identities. At that point, they dated and married in an attempt to make themselves whole, which just doesn’t work. The only person that can fill the “holes in your soul (Aerosmith)” is you!
So, in dating, one should be more interested in finding someone that is a compliment to their existing life instead of somebody to make their life complete. Because if you date for the latter, you aren’t being fair to the person you’re seeing and more importantly, yourself. If you’re dating to compliment, instead of complete, it is going to be much easier to find that sufficient somebody and increase your chances of making the relationship work.
Now granted, there are a lot of duds out there and I would never suggest settling for anybody. Instead of seeing this as a chore, see it as an opportunity to expand your horizons. You have the opportunity to share your true self with a number of different people. This opportunity can be emotionally fulfilling and tremendously gratifying. It isn’t until you start sharing something with other people that you can determine its true value. Even though this transaction is so fulfilling, you must always be mindful of people that try to take less than they offer. Don’t take this personally; just know that it’s one of the driving forces behind the human experience and something that only you can control!
A concept that used to terrify me was the idea that every time you have an intimate moment with someone (doesn’t have to be sexually) that you leave a piece of yourself with that person, as they do with you. What I also didn’t realize at that time is that you don’t always need a partner to find intimacy. It turns out the most common form of intimacy is what we’ll call personal intimacy. Now, I’m not talking masturbation here, but if you stop and think, you experience intimate moments almost every day! The Buddhists call this moment nirvana, or an escape from suffering. Nirvana is that moment when your mind, body, and soul are completely at one and happens to be the ultimate goal of Buddhism. Through my education on Buddhism, I understood nirvana to be this ultimate life goal through meditation, but I was wrong. You don’t practice meditation in an attempt to bring your soul into alignment, but to heighten your awareness to a point that you have the ability to recognize those moments of nirvana in your daily life. Also, when you become aware of this flash of personal intimacy, how long can you live in that single moment of joy and ecstasy. Personal intimacy (nirvana) can come from playing or even listening to a piece of music, from creating art, from getting a good grade or positive performance evaluation, from meeting a goal, or from resting your head on your pillow with the belief that you did your absolute best!
I used to believe that if intimacy left parts of me behind, that I could actually give so much of myself that eventually there wouldn’t be anything left of me to share; the prostitute/porn star effect. My life got so out of control because I was only aware of partnered intimacy and I felt that every tiny piece of my soul was costing me increasingly more than I could afford. So, I closed off my heart, walled up my apartment with newspapers and pizza boxes, and shared the only aspect of intimacy that I had left, food and alcohol, with the only person I thought I could trust.
What I have learned from later experiences and reflections on those dark, dark days absolutely blew my mind. Who you are has nothing to do with how much of your soul you have left, but an evaluation of where and how much of your identity that you’ve left behind. It isn’t about what is inside of you, but of the circumstances surrounding those moments of nirvana and how long you managed to live in those particular moments. Now, living in one particular moment for too long can be detrimental, just ask the 40-year-old, self-proclaimed high school hero, but that is a different discussion for a different day.
In all aspects of life, including dating, you must remember that the only person that can love you indiscriminately is yourself. After that, everything and everybody else is just icing on the cake.
“Your best friend is you. I’m my best friend too. We share the same views and hardly ever argue. Eat spam from a can, watch late night C-SPAN, and rock out to old school Duran, Duran!” Jimmy “Pop” Ali; the Bloodhound Gang
Expressions like “love at first sight” or “fall head over heels in love” are expressions used by people that are trying to hide their perceived faults and insecurities with the companionship of another person. Take it from a self-professed, chronic “love at first sight” guy. People fall immediately in love when they don’t have love for themselves. I used see a lot of truth behind the expression, “behind every great man is a greater woman that supports him.” I thought that if a woman that I loved and respected was holding on to one of my hands, that I could successfully reach for the stars with the other. I’ve said it before, but what I’ve come to discover is that if you first find your star and tightly grasp it with both hands, then you soul’s compliment will be the person that just so happens to be tightly grasping that very same star!
Best wishes and enjoy the journey,
Andy
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