Stop looking for love, it will find you! (Or will it?)

Things are always in the last place you look

Before I went to bed last night I vented to a friend. I messaged her about the disappointment I felt regarding my love life, and how it was weighing on me. I woke up this morning and checked the notifications on my phone to read a message that my friend had sent me. “Stop looking for love, it’ll find you,” she wrote. I know she was well-intentioned, but this line leaves me feeling hopeless and frustrated. This is a line often said to us when we are feeling down about our love lives. Where is this love!? Will a beautiful woman who has everything I’m looking for be teleporting to my living room with a box of chocolates and a bottle of my favourite white wine?

 

When people say this, what they really mean is to be open to love but not have any expectations, because when we don’t have expectations, it’s hard to get hurt. But how is this done? How can I not have expectations when I know exactly what I want? This is something I often think about. We have to physically look for a romantic partner or else how will we find them? At the same time, we have to be mentally prepared to be alone and be okay with being single to attract the right person into our lives.

 

Also, one can’t forget the challenges that this pandemic has brought upon us, and how it’s almost impossible to meet someone without feeling anxious about catching the big bad ‘rona!’ So online dating and pointless conversations over Tinder and Bumble that usually end nowhere it is! Months and months of half-assed, small talk that leads me to nothing but continuous disappointment one match after the other. But alas that is what we all have been subjected to for the past year and the foreseeable future.

 

Sometimes I wish I just didn’t know what I want. It definitely would leave me with less hurt if I just walked around aimlessness with no need to fill this void I crave to fill and a whole hell of a lot of time not wasting hours, weeks, and months on shallow small talk. Not knowing what I want means I have no expectations and not having any expectations will mean I’m not looking for love and it will just magically and unexpectedly find me. But this is not me, I’m a confident, thirty-something-year-old woman who knows exactly what she wants. I know my worth and I know what I deserve, so I will keep looking because one day I will find a like-minded woman whose wants will align with mine. 

Until then, I will enjoy a box of chocolates and a bottle of my favourite wine on my own because even though I do want to settle down, I don’t want to settle. I will be my own companion until the Universe leads me to my special person.