True love is the honest meeting of two hearts that are wide open to each other. It develops through familiarity and time together.
The potential for true love is everywhere; there are 7.2 billion people on Earth. The potential with a particular person might first be noticed through sexual attraction, but sexual attraction doesn’t guarantee true love is there and the absence of sexual attraction doesn’t always indicate there’s no potential for true love.
So, how do we find that one special person we’re happy to embrace as our partner for life?
Years ago, a friend introduced me to her solution to this particular question… something she called her “mate-finder”. I still laugh at the picture that brought to my mind… a person wearing a necklace that processed the personality traits, availability, and long-term compatibility of all potential mates within range. That would be one profitable app if someone could figure out how to build it!
Truthfully, we meet our mates in a huge variety of ways, and the vast majority of them don’t include going to clubs, attending the same church, using dating websites, or wearing a mate-finder.
The easiest path to finding potential loves is being yourself and participating in situations where you can actively engage face-to-face with a mix of people doing things you enjoy.
Think about this – couples who come together during the prime “mate finding” years of high school or college notice each other through being engaged in shared activities of some sort. The type of activities we choose to engage in may change as we get beyond those years, but engaging activities are still abundantly available.
When you’re out and about participating in those engaging activities, be both polite and comfortably honest. People don’t like to feel targeted and no one can read your mind. Initiate conversations with the people around you. Get to know them and let them know you. When there’s an opportunity to talk about your life, along with whatever else you say, let people know you’re single and would love to meet that special person of your dreams.
When you find yourself in the presence of someone you find interesting, politely tell that person that you’re interested and then give him/her space to think about the idea. If there’s no interest or no response, just politely move on. Then repeat the process with other people until the “click” occurs.
Once you begin dating someone, consider yourselves to be in a discovery, not in a relationship. Stay clear with yourself and your sweetheart about the fact that you’re looking for a long-term love relationship, but don’t play for keeps with each other too early. Play for fun and for learning about each other.
Do a lot of different things together and enjoy the process of getting to know each other, no strings attached, for at least six or seven months. Giving yourselves time to experience each other in the presence of different people and in different circumstances will allow you to see what’s consistent about each other and what changes as situations change. If you have issues with any of what you see or experience, talk honestly with each other about those things.
Using this time of discovery well will support both of you in knowing whether or not you want the relationship to grow beyond dating.
Laughing Womyn Ashonosheni is a Wisdom Teacher, Shaman & Healer who helps Millennials, GenX’ers & Baby Boomers live in ways they find to be delightful. You can see more about her work at LaughingWomyn.com.
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Laughing Womyn Ashonosheni 